David Cope

condition (record/cover): EX- / VG+ (sticker and stamp on back and general wear)

Grey labels. Inserts included.

Twenty years before he became the algorithmic-composition pioneer behind EMI (Experiments in Musical Intelligence), David Cope pressed this record on his own one-shot label. Two side-length electro-acoustic pieces, built around live instruments, whispered vocals, and tape processing routed through a Moog at the Electronic Studio of the Cleveland Institute of Music.

K is a procession of muttered consonants, looped piano fragments and electronic clatter. Weeds, the stronger piece, sets sparse piano notes against surging electronic noise, with the keyboard lid percussively slammed at the close. Cope had studied with George Perle, Halsey Stevens and Ingolf Dahl at USC; nothing in his later catalogue sounds anything like this. The Discant LP was the label's only release; the paste-on sleeve was already deteriorating in the seventies. A Creel Pone bootleg circulated in the 2000s. No legitimate reissue.