Biography

The Langley Schools Music Project is not so much a group as the name that served as an umbrella for a couple of super-obscure privately pressed LPs by Canadian elementary school students in the mid-70s The recordings were supervised and arranged by Hans Fenger a Vancouver musician who had taken a post teaching music in elementary schools in the rural area of Langley British Columbia Fenger took a then-radical and still-radical approach to music instruction that emphasized participation and pop songs the kids liked Even more radically he recorded his students on a couple of albums pressed in extremely small quantities for performers parents classmates and faculty only 300 were pressed of the first LP Recorded on two-track in a gym these feature approximately 50-strong groups of elementary school children singing usually together there are occasional solo spotlights poprock songs of the 60s and 70s like Good Vibrations Band on the Run and Desperado They were accompanied by minimal instrumentation including cymbals xylophones metallophones one open-tuned string of an electric bass and Fengers own acoustic rhythm guitar and piano It was all made to order for eventual rediscovery by incredibly strange music fans of course Irwin Chusid author of Songs in the Key of Z was the prime force behind its 2001 CD reissue on BarNone While the record has the amateurish guilelessness one would expect given the circumstances it does boast some truly odd arrangements with cavernous reverb sloppy cymbal crashes and spooky dabs of xylophone The bizarre reading of Space Oddity with its apocalyptic slides and over-tremoloed guitar is a highlight In the early 21st century its cult following had attracted listeners that the 150 or so school children who participated in these recordings could have scarcely imagined with John Zorn David Bowie Richard Carpenter and Penn Jillette all praising the record Richie Unterberger All Music Guide