Raymond Scott (1908-1994), as a musician, composer, bandleader, and inventor, was a perfectionist, but he was not a stylistic purist. His late-1930s six-man “Quintette” offered a novel jazz hybrid that layered ethnic flavors and pan-global riffs over a propulsive beat. Scott’s orchestral works could bounce like the popular Swing Era dance bands or veer into idiosyncratic concert-jazz. His antic melodies were adapted in Warner Bros. cartoons, but nobody noticed because Scott never talked about it. His pioneering electronic music of the 1950s and ’60s also slipped past history because Scott was secretive about his research.

For these and other reasons, older music history books tend to overlook his work. Raymond had multiple musical personalities, but the achievements of each separate persona were seemingly too marginal or unknown compared to contemporaries who fit neatly in a single category. Scott was a genre-hopper, reflecting a musical restlessness.

In the two decades-plus he’s represented the Scott estate, producer/archivist Irwin Chusid has sought to reinvent and rebrand Raymond for the 21st Century. On Raymond Scott Rewired, he lets others take the parts and reconstruct the legacy.

Chusid commissioned three remix artists to reconfigure Scott. The Bran Flakes (Otis Fodder, Montreal), The Evolution Control Committee (TradeMark Gunderson, U.S.), and Go Home Productions (Mark Vidler, U.K.) were given hundreds of recordings owned by the Scott estate, in all genres, including unreleased material, spanning the 1930s to the 1980s. They were invited to have fun, keep it rhythmic, and make it percolate. Each chemist concocted six audio montages with new titles, and they collaborated on Scott’s signature tune “Powerhouse.”

Approximately 250 sample sources were used in the construction of these 19 tracks. Those samples have been edited, looped, flipped, and stretched; they were tweaked with equalization, pitch-shifted, compressed, and subjected to all manner of digital cosmetology. Scott fans will recognize some passages, but in countless cases, the source recordings have been rendered unrecognizable.

The package, designed by Piet Schreuders, features a cover illustration adapted from a 1950s work by legendary artist Jim Flora.