Mark Mothersbaugh: “Muzik for Insomniaks” (1988)

“Please play at a low volume. Muzik for Insomniaks is designed to interface with your world.” - Mark Mothersbaugh  

For some reason, this wonderful, two-volume album of Mark Mothersbaugh’s Fairlight and Roland compositions has fallen off the map. I see no evidence of re-releases after 1988, and it doesn’t seem to be available for purchase or streaming anywhere official. 

This music has been a regular companion to my days, and my daughter (now 21) has been a fan of “XP137” for nearly her whole life. 

It was recorded during the period when Mothersbaugh was writing music for “Pee Wee’s Playhouse,” and not long before he started scoring “Rugrats.” His big-time movie career, including extensive work with Wes Anderson, followed. 

Cover art is by Mothersbaugh - a detail scanned from one of the posters that came with the CD edition.

28 songs, 2 hours 21 minutes

zipped up mp3 download here

Sample: XP137

12 responses
I has heard of this, but never had the pleasure of listening to it. It has an unexpected krauty vibe! Digging the NE Ohio love, John
John, excellent. Cleveland and Akron are the cradles of punk IMO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzik_for_Insomni... Apparently the two tracks (with the same title, 'Index') are missing, and at least in my folder, the tracks are as if it is a single album, rather than the two discs, but I'm sure if I fed it into iTunes, it would come up as the two distinct discs LOL Not that I think the flow matters, it is all nice background muzik, as Mr. Mothersbaugh suggests it should be ;)
Fredrick, the two volumes/albums are tagged with different album titles (vol 1 and 2), and for each, the tracks are numbered correctly. Sort by album. The "Index" tracks just contain the beginnings of every song on each album.
Re-sorting, it does differentiate, but as I said above, I don't think their proper order affects the experience...I simply referenced the Wikipedia for more information than you provided, as it is quite the enjoyable set, and I only mentioned the Index tracks because they were listed there LOL
This double set is absolutely beautiful. The first track off of volume 2 is very similar to the Rugrats theme - it may have been what caught the creators ear when he was asking MM to compose for it. I hope this gets reissued on record someday!
Such cool music! Thanks for posting a link! I dont even know what this site is but showed up while trying to find this music! Thanks a lot for posting this!
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