Curtis Roads

Curtis Roads (born 1951) is a composer, programmer and writer on electronic music. He studied at CalArts and at the University of California San Diego, was a researcher at MIT from 1980 to 1986, edited Computer Music Journal from 1978 to 2000 and co-founded the International Computer Music Association in 1979. He has taught at Harvard, in Naples and in Paris, and is now at the Media Arts and Technology programme of the University of California, Santa Barbara. His books, The Computer Music Tutorial (1996) and Microsound (2004) among them, are standard references in the field.

The record pairs two pieces made a long way apart. Clang-Tint, on side A, dates from 1994 and was commissioned by the Japanese Ministry of Culture (Bunka-cho) and the Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo. It draws on the sounds of ancient instruments alongside computer-generated ones. Modulude, on side B, is built on modulation, one of the basic synthesis processes of electronic music, and Roads worked on it from 1998 to 2021, the year this LP came out. His own liner notes on both pieces are printed on the back of the sleeve.

Slowscan vol. 55, published in 2021. Black vinyl in an offset printed sleeve designed by Johnny Van de Koolwijk. Edition of 250 copies.