i have a stipulation in my concert-rider that reads thusly: ‘If the promoters of the show take me to a record store wherein I find one of my personal “Holy Grail” LPs for a reasonable price, I will perform that evening for free. Because of this, people are always asking me about my “Holy Grail” records and offering advice (“French & German electronic music from the 50s through 70s? You mean J.M. Jarre & Tangerine Dream?”, or “Pierre Henry? have you heard this really obscure one; ‘Messe Pour le Fin du Temps?’” or my personal favorite: “Is Lego Feet one of them? Because I have a CD-R of a dupe of a copy that I can burn for you...”)

You can probably guess what a couple of them are; ”Electronic Panorama”, Karel Appel’s “Musique Barbare”, Paul Panhuysen & Johan Goedhart’s “Long String Installations”, “Electronic Music From York”, the self-released Desmond Leslie 10”, Paul Boisselet’s “Robot”, Parmegiani’s “Chants Magnetiques”, etc... but right up there in the top 3 is this obscure gem: Anestis Logothetis’ “„Hör!-Spiel” Necrologlog 1961 Fantasmata 1960”. Said LP, originally “pressed on behalf of the musical youth of Austria” in 1975, consists of two text-sound pieces from 1971/1961 and an absolute monster of an early tape-piece: the side-long “Fantasmata 1960.” This was composed, you guessed it, in 1960 in the “Institut Für Elektroakustik Der Musikhochschule In Wien".

So... what makes this a “Holy Grail” record? I’ll tell you... two things actually; for one, this record was never distributed or even made available in any real way. Once a year, somewhere in the world, behind closed doors in expensive offices with much finely polished Teak / Cherrywood furniture, pipes are smoked and a single copy changes hands for more money than I pay per month in rent. Secondly, “Fantasmata 1960” was hand-picked by Günter Brüs, Rudy Schwarzkogler, et.al as the soundtrack to their earliest Aktionist performances in Vienna in the mid-60s - mainly as at the time, there just plum weren’t any other violent, jump-cut, noise-oriented tape music from Austria (or... anywhere in the world for that matter).

Listening to “Fantasmata 1960”, in all 20 minutes of its coarse, scrabbly, short-attention-span glory, it’s an easy parallel to make to the reckless public endangerment and bodily harm of the Akionists. Moreso than with any other early (and this is, really, quite early) Electronic piece i’ve heard, “Fantasmata” really echoes the stop-start contempo-noise jank of Merzbow, Wiese, Kites, et.al. For a piece of music executed in 1960, it’s pretty damn brutal; just full-on, greasy, and super-inviting...

This second revision includes the entirety of Logothetis' Amadeo "Österreichische Musik Der Gegenwart" LP on a second disc, including the pieces "Anastasis"(performed by Siegfrieds Behrend & Fink), "Wellenformen", and "Styx".