Josef Anton Riedl

condition (record/cover): NM / NM

Insert included. | A singular artifact of the Munich experimental scene — one of the very few LPs to document the work of Josef Anton Riedl (1929–2011), the composer, concert organizer, and tireless advocate who made Munich one of the most important centers of new music in post-war Europe. Riedl's role in the history of the German avant-garde is almost entirely that of an organizer: he founded the musica viva series, organized the Nymphenburger Konzerte, and brought figures from Cage to Nono to the Bavarian public over decades of sustained institutional effort. But alongside this organizational practice ran a compositional one that has received almost no attention.

Klangfelder — "sound fields" — documents Riedl's work in electronic and electroacoustic composition, a practice shaped by his intimate knowledge of what was happening in studios across Europe and his own fierce independence from the dominant aesthetic programs of Darmstadt. The works here move between strict construction and open resonance — sonic architectures that accumulate and dissolve without the drama of arrival or resolution. Issued by the Loft label on this LP in an edition that has never been adequately distributed or discussed. One of the genuine hidden documents of the Munich avant-garde. The music is a complex blend of sound-poetry, anti-music, and performance art with an experimental and somewhat harsh quality. His work is sometimes compared to other electronic and concrete music pioneers such as Daphne Oram and Gottfried Michael König, and even modern artists like Autechre, appealing to fans of early electronic music, microsound, and noise.