Jonathan Knight - Rainy Night in Shangri-La

Thinking about so-called (by me) "late exotica" in the previous post sparked a memory of this album. I ripped this quite a while back so there's no pic of the cover.

Jonathan Knight's Rainy Night in Shangri-La has a great selection of songs, strong arrangements and superb exotica sound effects with the bird calls and the thunder and rain, and it would be one of my all time favorite exotica LPs if not for the fact that Mr Knight's instrument of choice is the harpsichord. Yup, harpsichord. If you've ever wondered what Martin Denny would've sounded like if he performed for the court of Marie Antoinette then this album is right up your alley.

ANY other musical instrument would've been better than the harpsichord! Oboe, cello, trombone, mandolin, didgeridoo (actually, a didgeridoo exotica album would be extremely cool!), tuba or even a plain old harp would've been better. Any instrument that makes me think of John Malkovich in a wig and hose is a damnable thing.

Looking on the bright side: you've got some great tunes including Quiet Village, Yellow Bird, Pagan Love Song and Bali Hai; the rip sounds good and maybe this could kind of sort of fit in with a bunch of late exotica tracks.

I'm not crazy about this one but some of you may dig it.

Crazy harpsichord music here.

EDIT: Tiki Tim was kind enough to share HQ scans of the front and back covers of this LP. They can be downloaded here.