Trevor Wishart

TERRIFIC!!! Housed in custom printed outer-pvc with a design aesthetic worthy of the music contained within** After owning our ears with the Keith Fullerton Whitman album last week, Pan Records present a compelling trio of important recordings from visionary sound art composer, Trevor Wishart - available on vinyl for the first time. Since the mid '70s Trevor has conducted "systematic research into various vocal-speech figures and the possibilities for their noting, giving special emphasis to the computer technologies", publishing a number of books on the subject and related areas and collecting awards from numerous academic competitions and festivals. The two short pieces on the A-side, titled 'Fanfare & Contrapunctus' were recorded in 1976 at the newly opened electronic studio at the Sydney Conservatorium, prior to the advent of music computer technology. With source material derived from "...soft trumpets, pop-guns, French Horn and virtuoso eating noises plus recordings of birdsong and other environmental sources" he constructs wildly abstract free improvisations, with an acute sense of humour in the second piece of extended vocal techniques, we might add. 'Imago' on the other side, was recorded in 2002 and features the clink of two whiskey glasses morphed into a dazzling multitude of stereo shapes using the transformation software Composers Desktop Project. While the two earlier pieces are highly intriguing and occasionally daft, this one is visceral and dynamically chaotic, making for a stupendous listening experience. The subtitle of this piece '...the universe in a grain of sand...' is incredibly apt.