You have the right to go to outer space....

When I was little, my dad was known to occasionally break out his home-planetarium kit.  A tiny black orb etched with pin points through which lights shone, illuminating a beige starscape on the living room ceiling.  My dad would talk us through the various constellations, using a pointer that, working on the same principle as the bat signal, was simply a little flashlight with a red arrow stuck over the lens.  A good night's fun for a family with no TV.

I also remember the trips to local science museums, the moments of anticipation before the planetarium's dome darkened and filled with the deep resonant monotone of narrators elaborating ancient celestial dances.  In the dim light before the show, the planetarium echoed with whispering synthesizers, phasered bells, and vocoded soft jazz.  A melancholy calm enveloped my excitement, as I waited to lose myself in the darkness between the stars.

Now, in some way in homage to those evenings, I find myself drawn to the quaint futurism of the music below. Dance to the sounds of hearts beating out a rhythm into the lonesome infinity of deep space.    

Here's some evocative planetarium disco.  

Not to be confused with this.

Beeping and weeping....

Clara Rockmore could be the moniker of late 20th century B-Girl in the vein of YoYo or JJ Fad.  In actual fact, it's the name of a devastatingly talented Lithuanian-born  theremin prodigy.  So, names can be deceiving.  

Rockmore's 1976 performance of Tchaikovsky's Valse Sentimentale is a piece of music guaranteed to send you into a misty-eyed reverie.

The theremin's electronic ice flow of sound is thawed by her elegant human touch.  

And as the picture in the video attests, she was also a pioneer of electroclash fashion. 

Here you can see Rockmore at work.  Elegantly marrying Old World sentiment with Futurist technology while her circuits gently weep... 

Sexual Harassment...

Well, here's one take...

Wow.  Pretty stilted and uncomfortable, right? But if you're a person truly worthy of the name GERALD D. ALLGOOD, this is the only Sexual Harassment you need be privy to...

I get SPRUNG....

Spring has arrived, and with it light jackets, lime-infused ales, and impromptu taco cookouts.

Here in Chicago, the sun's return is met with appropriately orgiastic pagan ecstasy after the blighted winter months have all but crushed our spirits.

In short, it's time to bask in the Sound of Rimini*.  It's the musical equivalent of wine cooler.

I understand that in a way this is terrible.  Kasso's tropical, light-disco chiller wouldn't sound out place bumping out of the department store speakers in the khaki-and-teal aisles of Ross Dress For Less.  Nor would it jar you out of an afternoon reverie as you sit in a hot minivan back seat after a day of water-sliding the public pool.  That's why it's great.  It's the sound of mellow nostalgia, all wrapped up in a time capsule of TV-theme pianos and swaying palm fronds.

Here's some more deliciously sun-dazed Kasso.  

There's just something about a white piano on a beach.

*Rimini is a resort town on Italy's Adriatic coast.  We Italo like that.