Jack Tamul

condition (record/cover): EX / VG+ (top seam split with tape repair and edges wear)

The first solo LP by Jack Tamul (b. 1948, Providence, Rhode Island), a composer based at Florida Junior College in Jacksonville. Six pieces realised at Tamul's home studio between roughly 1977 and 1980, scored for Prophet-5, ARP 2600, Moog modular and Florida Junior College Chorale, the latter directed by Karen Armel. The record was funded by a grant from the Fine Arts Council of Florida.

Genesis and Lament for Gettysburg (the latter with Shirley Tamul as soprano soloist) layer the FJC chorus over electronic drone beds; Canon Cancrizans, Fantasia, Mogul and Wave Rhapsody are fully synthesized. The texture sits at the unlikely intersection of post-Ligeti choral writing and analogue-synth drone (the kind of territory Lustmord would explore in the eighties; the kind Eno and Hassell were just entering on Fourth World Vol. 1). The Spectrum imprint, a small American experimental label that also released William R. Strickland and Gershon Kingsley, pressed in modest numbers. The 1986 cassette The Referee Has Vanished extended Tamul's vocabulary further.