Aerial Pandemonium Ballet

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AllMusic

Aerial Pandemonium Ballet is a 1971 album by Harry Nilsson, and one of the first-ever remix albums, years before they became commonplace in the late 1970s and 1980s onwards.

With the successes of "Everybody's Talkin'" and The Point! creating demand for Nilsson recordings, a reissue of his first two RCA Victor albums (Pandemonium Shadow Show and Aerial Ballet), then out of print, was considered. Nilsson thought that his early albums already sounded a bit dated by 1971. So he went back into the studio with the master tapes, remixed, tweaked, and re-recorded vocals, and came up with a new consolidation that he titled Aerial Pandemonium Ballet.

It is a matter of intense debate among Nilsson fans whether this was a good idea. Reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine, on allmusic.com, describes the result as "just old tunes presented in slightly new, slightly off-putting ways."

Track listing

All music and lyrics by Harry Nilsson except where noted

1. Introduction – :09
2. "1941" – 2:37 (slowed down track & remixed)
3. "Daddy's Song" – 2:07 (new vocals, guitar/piano/out of sync)
4. "Mr. Richland's Favorite Song" – 2:07 (new bg vocals & remixed)
5. "Good Old Desk" – 2:30 (slowed down track & remixed)
6. "Everybody's Talkin'" (Fred Neil) – 2:42 (dumped second voice & remixed)
7. "Bath" – 1:50 (re-EQ'd original tracks)
8. "River Deep – Mountain High" (Phil Spector, Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich) – 3:57 (new vocals & remixed)
9. "Sleep Late, My Lady Friend" – 2:37 (remixed)
10. "Don't Leave Me" – 2:12 (remixed)
11. "Without Her" – 2:08 (new vocals & remixed)
12. "Together" – 1:37 (new vocals, edited out bridge & remixed)
13. "One" – 2:18 (remixed and significantly edited - the original was 2:50)
14. Closing – :20