Reissues
Music Works for Industry
Marc Barreca’s Music Works for Industry is a layered assertion. An economic mantra for the mind to spin, like the many loops on this recording, or churn, as gears of some godhead machine. From the pool of playful compositions, a social subtext appears – a somewhat sardonic riposte to the commercial and cynical abuse of music and musicians. The work profits the listener over industry. Said another way, its motivations are more generative than lucrative.
No longer than four minutes, no shor…
¡Ahora!
At the top of my personal holy grail list for a number of years has been this unobtainable side of Agitprop Musique Concrète by the Composer Ivan Pequeño, composed from 1973-1975 at Paris' Studio de Musique Expérimentale du Centre Americain & at Belgrade's Studio de Musique Electronique du Treci Program-Radio & issued on Aldo Pagani's mythic Eleven label - home of Franco Leprino's "Integrati… Disintegrati", amongst other gems. The A-Side's "¡Ahora!" ("Now!") weaves the Composer's interstitial, c…
Predestination
A-grade, primal bleep from the Academic sector; Rune Lindblad's first & best record - amazingly never available on disc prior to this replica edition - from 1975, originally issued via the Proprius books & records imprint. Listening to this now, eyes closed, I'm amazed at how little progress there's been in the world of analogue electronic music & the organization & compositional sensibilities offered within; some of the timbres sounds wholly contemporary & their working methods perfectly in li…
CANTS DEL TROBADORS: «La Doucer D'Un Son Nouvel»
The Ventadoorn label was set up in 1970 & released over 100 LPs & EP's over the following decade, all centering in on some facet of Lenga d'Oc / "Old" French language & culture. Some of you may be familiar with the 1980 Henry Fourès / Luc Ferrari "Folclòre Imaginari" set - later reissued on Adda as "Ce Qu'a Vu Le Cers" - as one of the label's final releases, but a year prior they issued this absolute masterpiece of a record, merging Occitan folk forms & instrumentation with extended drone-psych…
Underwater Electronic Orchestra
One of the, in retrospect, better constructs of the Creel Pone cabal is that, despite many beliefs to the contrary, it is in fact a committee of semi-like-minded souls, all interested in portraying some aspect of the "Unheralded Electronic Music" canon. Case in point; while I personally wouldn't have included this particular collection of gossamer isolation-tank filigree & majority psychedelic-disco, it was strongly nominated by a number of the Cognoscenti along the way - partly due to its scarc…
Ritratto Di Giovane, Symphonie Pour Un Enfant Seul
One of the true Musique Concrète Holy Grails - alongside Jacques Lejeune's "Fantasmes Ou L'Histoire De Blanche-Neige" & the Jean Schwarz / Jacques Lejeune / Phillip Beetz "Des Musiques Des Sons" set - is this privately issued 3LP boxed set from the husband & wife team of Françoise Barrière & Christian Clozier, consisting of one extended piece by each; Barrière's "Ritratto di Giovane" & Clozier's "Symphonie Pour Un Enfant Seul." Barrière's six-part "Ritratto Di Giovane" - "Le Vieux Clown, "Et Le…
Musical Electro-Alchemy
The only solo outing by "Works of Electronic Music" alumnus Iván Patatich, a collection of six late-70s Electronic works realized at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht & "H'EAR" - the Electronic Music Studio of the Hungarian Radio, including "Antiphons (Antifonák)" (1977), "Calling sounds (Hivó jelek)" (1977), "Ballade" (1976), "Ludus syntheticus" (1977), "Chinese temple with echo (Kínai templom visszhanggal)" (1979), & "Hommage à l'électronique" (1978). Much like the László Dubrovay "Live Ele…
An Electronic Visit To The Zoo, Sound Hypnosis
Closing out a trilogy of releases initially readied by the Harriman, NY powerhouse Spectrum (following the Jack Tamul & William Hoskins titles) is this fantastic set of noisy synthesizer adagios, composed in the late 70s by William Strickland on Moog Modular, Organ, and Four-Channel Tape. Offering a pair of conceptual, side-length suites, a series of exceedingly lo-fi miniatures meets us on the A-Side; "An Electronic Visit to the Zoo" seems to almost ignore its own premise - despite the red-herr…
Collections I, Electronic Music With and Without Instruments
Second title in this 199-x series - itself dedicated to working through titles that had been languishing in limbo in the Creel Pone "nominations" sector for some time while specific "Golden Circle" Cabal members feud bitterly over their possible inclusion - offering the only LP by Scott A. Wyatt, following the fantastic "in Celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the Experimental Music Studios" set. Released at the tail-end of the 1970s on the Academic "University Brass Recordings Series" (UBRES)…
La Trilogie de la Montagne
Gorgeous, three-part Musique Concrète suite, composed at McGill's Electronic Music studio during 1977 & 78 by Quebecois composer Michel Longtin, timbrally presaging much of the FM synthesis-laden work of the early 80s & onwards, acting a bridge between the two sensibilities.
Brotzmann Box
"Brotzmann Box" is a beautiful box set containing 3 albums by German free jazz master Peter Brötzmann. The first volume of the album is "Full Blast" (JW 1) with Brötzmann (alto and soprano sax, tárogató) playing in a super Swiss-German trio with Marino Pliakas (electric bass), a member of Swiss Steamboat, and Michael Wertmuller (drums), one of the best musiciand of the Berlin music scene and member of the group Alboth. Together these three musicians create a truly unique musical cosmos that lies…
Viaje
In 1976 the fairly square “Movieplay S.A.” imprint (via their slightly hipper “Serie Gong”) quietly issued this monster of a live-electronic / psych-freakout opus (oddly, alongside canonic titles by Inti-Illimani, Victor Jara, et.al ... all considerably more “Inside”) by the then-unknown composers Eduardo Polonio & Horacio Vaggione, recording under the name It. Predating the latter’s canonic Cramps-label debut “La Maquina Del Cantar” by a couple of years, this is miles away from the controlled g…
Genesis Interruptions +
Creel Pone reproduction of Randall McClellan's 1975 Opus One LP "Genesis Interruptions," including, as a bonus, his pieces from the Opus One split with Joel Chadabe & one from a later CRI compilation, collecting all of his Early Electronic Music issued formally in the "Classic Era." After a semi-recent Sun Ark 4CS box of his later, more New-Age-leaning productions, it's interesting to hear his "Academic," yet largely drone-centric music made when he was the director of the Electronic Music Studi…
Computer Music, Musica Elettronica+
Handy collection of all of Composer James Dashow's early Computer Music issued in the vinyl era, including his 1982 Edipan "Computer Music / Musica Elettronica" LP, plus his track from the "Computer Directions" collection on CRI & the piece "La Pianta Di Livio" tucked onto the end of the soundtrack to the film "Oedipus Orca" released on Cinevox. Dashow started out in the Chicagoland area, studying with J. K. Randall amongst others before heading to Italy on a Fulbright in the late 60s where he s…
Jacques Bekaert (LP)
Continuing in the Igloo appreciation thread, here is a replication of IGL 008; Jacques Bekaert's 1981 eponymous LP - following 1979's "Summer Music" for Lovely - containing three tape pieces composed between 1969 & 1978, featuring contributions by a who's who of 60s & 70s Avant Garde & Fluxus figures - Takehisa Kosugi, Shigeko Kubota, David Behrman, David Rosenboom, Maggi Payne, George Lewis, "Blue" Gene Tyranny, Ryo Koike, amongst many others. The extended "Late Lunch" - at 28 minutes barely fi…
Silances
Continuing in the Creel Pone "6" Igloo program, here's a picture-perfect reproduction of one of the more obscure & bewitching entrants into the label's early discography, Henry Krutzen's 1981 "Silances" LP; IGL 006. Nestled somewhere between Ghédalia Tazartès' mutant Sound Poetry, Anton Bruhin's acoustic / Alphorn drones & the more "Private" sensibilities of Badouin Oosterlynck, Paul A.R. Timmermans, or latter-day channelers like Raymond Dijkstra, the largely quiet, humble multi-track constructs…
Te Deum - An Electronic Realization
"I have a soft spot for "Religious" Early Electronic Music outings - secular or not, the "Provocative Electronics" LP is one of my favorites in the C.P. series, as are Ralph Swickard's "Sermons Of Saint Francis" & "Hymn Of Creation," both present on the first "Creelpolation" - so this "Private" 1979 outing, the sole release by Composer Henry Sweitzer of beautifully hand-played advanced synthesizer motifs & home-studio Musique Concrète is a real find. Starting with the side-length title piece, Sw…
Osterreichische Musik Der Gegenwart, Elektronische Musik 1-3
Reproducing a trio of mid-late 80s LP titles on the Amadeo label; "30 Jahre Elektroakustik," "Tonband Und...," & "Tape Music," this double-disc set offers an incredibly wide breadth of work either by composers of Austrian origin - or by those closely aligned with the Austrian Electro-Acoustic community - over a 30-year timeframe. The first set includes early work by Roman Haubenstock-Ramati (whose "L'Amen De Verre," composed at the GRM in 1957, opens the set), Max Brand (a 1962 piece, "Die Astro…
Datura, The Last Ten Minutes
The two moldy, water-logged LPs being reproduced here - the particular copies in question were steeped in Italian bog-water for decades, then recently proffered to the Mr. P.C. C.P. brain-trust - cover the self-released early-80s Electronic Free Jazz / Improv diversions of one Robert Aaron - the New York "Jazz Musician" / James Chance sideman who was recently arrested in connection to Philip Seymour Hoffman's death. That aside, let's focus on the music: both LPs - issued via Aaron's Private Arti…
Galactic Fantasy, Eastern Reflections
Criminally under-rated set of Early American Moog Modular Synthesizer Music - the sole release by composer William Hoskins, the "Director of Electronic Music and Composer-in-Residence at Jacksonville University in Florida." Issued in 1979 by the Harriman, NY-based Spectrum - a "Division of UNI-PRO Recordings, Inc." the LP consists of a pair of discrete pieces, with each taking up a side of its own. "Galactic Fantasy" lives up to the premise of its title, its far-reaching narratives are concerned…