Current digitized favorite is Ferrante and Teicher's Heavenly Sounds in Hi-Fi (1958). Ferrante and Teicher were a pair of ex-Julliard concert pianists who, at the end of the 50s, put out several albums of popular songs and show tunes performed on "prepared pianos". As with John Cage's prepared  piano works (which they were aware of), they changed the timbre and pitch of the instruments by placing various objects on or between the piano strings and plucking, hammering or rubbing them. But in addition they also used the studio as an instrument - tape manipulation, echo (achieved by placing extra microphones in the bathroom outside the studio), layers of reverb and so on. (Also a celeste and a sine-wave generator sneak in here.) Their most well-know album - and the only one available on CD - from this period is Blast Off, which emphasized the wackiness of the concept (and the cover is probably responsible for half of Devo's schtick), but Heavenly Sounds is ethereal and spacey (eight of the twelve tracks have "moon" or "star" in the title) and familiar songs are transformed into an exotic blending of Debussy and Joe Meek. Totally and mind-altering gorgeous and only slightly kitsch, music to drink martinis to and fall asleep under the stars.

Their albums after this - and they made thousands - are pretty much cheesy listening at its most deplorable (although the progression of their image can provide amusement to the meanspirited)  and these are  the ones you'll find clogging up the "lounge" or "spaceage pop" sections of most secondhand record stores these days. But since there's always the change that Soundproof or Soundblast will be lurking at the back one still has to go through them....

And yes, I'll put some tracks online at some point. (For the time being, go listen to "Man from Mars" from Soundproof here.)


UPDATE: It is (sort of) available on CD as Easy Listening Favorites - with a different title, cover and two tracks missing so who'd want that?