Morton Subotnick
Morton Subotnick is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his Silver Apples of the Moon, the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch. Subotnick has also worked extensively with interactive electronics and multi-media. At a time when electronic music was highly abstract, largely concerned with pitch and timbre, with rhythm an afterthought or of no consequence and patterns largely avoided, Subotnick broke with the academic avant-gardists by including sections with regular rhythms.
Morton Subotnick is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his Silver Apples of the Moon, the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch. Subotnick has also worked extensively with interactive electronics and multi-media. At a time when electronic music was highly abstract, largely concerned with pitch and timbre, with rhythm an afterthought or of no consequence and patterns largely avoided, Subotnick broke with the academic avant-gardists by including sections with regular rhythms.
The Wild Bull
2023 repress. Audiophile 180 gram LP that was cautiously remastered for vinylRe-issued on vinyl for the first time since its original 1968 release! Based on an ancient Sumerian poem, Morton Subotnick's follow-up to his highly influential milestone Silver Apples of the Moon (KR 014LP) is no less an adventurous sonic trip on the Buchla synthesizer. Limited edition (500 items) audiophile 180 gram LP, especially mastered for vinyl. Born in 1933, Morton Subotnick is a key figure in the progress of el…
Music For The Double Life Of Amphibians (Landmark Recordings)
*2022 stock* 'The literal meaning of “amphibian” is “double life” and applies to animals living part of their lives in water and part of their lives on land. In the program note to his electroacoustic classic Music for the Double Life of Amphibians, Morton Subotnick states that “amphibian” is to be taken as a metaphor for the work’s structure and programmatic content, which follow a metamorphosis of being through the stages of amphibian to beast to angel. But it also applies to the musical mater…
The Wild Beasts - Landmark Recordings
*2022 stock* Morton Subotnick achieved fame in the field of electronic music with Silver Apples of the Moon and The Wild Bull, his best-known tape works of the late 1960s. Since then, he has been active combining electronics with other media, notably employing gestural sketches on tape to alter sounds produced by voices and instrumentalists. The two works on this 2015 Wergo release are representative of Subotnick's methods, using a trumpet with a chamber ensemble in After the Butterfly, to reali…
Silver Apples of the Moon / The Wild Bull
Silver Apples of the Moon' is without a doubt the best known work from influential composer and electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick. It was originally commissioned by Nonesuch records back in 1967, when electronic music was more of a series of ideas than a recognised art form, and since then it has achieved well deserved classic status, influencing so much that would come after it is impossible to conceive. Subotnick's instrument of choice was the Buchla modular synthesizer, a gigantic pat…
Touch • Jacob's Room
*2022 stock* 'I believe Jacob's Room is one of the most extraordinary examples of extended vocal techniques that I have ever heard. Touch is the child of the original Buchla electronic music triumvirate that included Silver Apples and Wild Bull. Its exploration of the sound and texture possibilities of electronic music is a variation on the two previous compositions. Jacob's Room is a vehicle for Subotnick's wife, Joan LaBarbara to demonstrate why she is universally considered the master of exte…
Volume 1: Electronic Works
*2022 stock* Although this might be labelled 'Volume 1', this large collection of Morton Subotnick's work (featuring three of his pieces - 'Touch', 'A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur' and 'Gestures') actually showcases some of his most recent compositions. The pioneering electronic composer shot into the public eye with his very well known album 'Silver Apples of the Moon', but his work didn't end there and here we get 'Touch' which was composed just after 'The Wild Bull' in 1969 set next to 'A Sky of …
Silver Apples Of The Moon
2020 repress. As composer, musician and initiator of the San Francisco Tape Music Center which he cofounded with Pauline Oliveros and Ramon Sender in 1961, Morton Subotnick (born 1933) has propelled the progress of electronic music in several significant ways. From 1963 on he worked with Don Buchla on the development of the early synthesizer Buchla Series 100 before moving to New York where the artist-in-residence at the newly established Tisch School of the Arts of New York University was enabl…
Complete Piano Works
This release brings all of Morton Subotnick’s piano music together on one album for the first time, along with four first recordings, all supervised by the composer.Liquid Strata is an important work in Subotnick’s oeuvre. Here the electronic component is what he calls “ghost electronics,” and this is the first of 11 Ghost Pieces. In these works, Subotnick sought to address technology in a way that highlights rather than compromises the inherent features and strengths of acoustical instruments. …
Silver Apples Of The Moon 50th-anniversary ed.
Vinyl edition is strictly limited to 1,000 copies. Audio has been Remastered from the original, pre-mastered digital tape transfers. Unlike previous reissues of this LP (both vinyl and CD), remastered for Wergo's 1994 CD edition and narrowing the recording's stereo field, our reissue has been remastered maintaining the full stereo field of the original recording. Brand new liner notes by Morton Subotnick.The original, iconic liquid-light cover artwork by Tony Martin has been re-scanned for full-…
Volume 2: Electronics Works
Multi-channel electronic works in Surround Sound. Morton Subotnick was a phenomenon in the late '60s, the first composer to write substantial works for synthesizer that had a wide audience. He has been mentor to generations of composers, and his influence is so pervasive that it would be impossible to trace completely - the electronica movement, for one, reveres him. This release brings together two of his classic analog electronic works which were previously only available on LP.
The DVD includ…
Electronic Works 3
Until Spring was first conceived in 1975 on the Buchla synthesizer using only analog techniques. “It was about 10 years from Silver Apples to Until Spring,” Subotnick explains, “and I’d evolved a whole concept and a technique, but I had gone as far as I could go with it. I could do everything I wanted to do, but I couldn’t do it in real time.” As computers and software developed in the coming decades, Morton Subotnick created a software-based instrument that he felt could allow him to compl…
And the Butterflies Begin to Sing
Both works on this disc share the trademarks of his unique style: the relentless, pounding motoric energy that merges, sometimes with startling suddenness, into a dreamlike texture that seems to float, the continual sense of something magical occurring, often produced with no more paraphernalia than a desktop computer. And the Butterflies Begin to Sing [for string quartet, bass, MIDI keyboard, and computer (1988)], conceived as music for an imaginary ballet, is based on The Hundred Headless Wome…