The first volume in The Carl Stalling Project series is a revelation; more than just an essential part of a Warner Bros. staff that generated some of the finest and most inspired productions in the history of animation, Stalling was a visionary whose work deserves consideration among the finest American avant-garde music ever recorded. As these 15 selections from WB cartoons dating between 1936 and 1958 attest, his cut and paste style -- a singular collision between jazz, classical, pop, and virtually everything else in between -- was unprecedented in its utter disregard for notions of time, rhythm, and compositional development; Stalling didn't just break the rules, he made them irrelevant. That in the process he created music beloved by succeeding generations of children is more impressive still -- perhaps even unwittingly, Stalling introduced the avant-garde into the mainstream, and as popular music continues to diversify and hybridize, his stature as a pioneer rightfully continues to grow. ~ Jason Ankeny