One of the great overlooked artifacts of the New York avant-garde, Meredith Monk’s debut album - Key, is a revelation - leaping over the decades with a vision as radical as the day it was made. Originally privately issued in 1971 - now emerging in the hands of Tompkins Square, across its sides, the human voice unfurls as it's rarely been heard - the origins of Monk’s seminal body of work, and a near perfect lens into the awe inspiring nature of the era from which it sprang.

Within avant-garde practice, Meredith Monk is as close as it gets to household name - standing with the likes of Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Laurie Anderson. During the late 1970’s and 80’s, she made considerable strides bridging the worlds of radical multi-media process and pop culture. Key encounters the composer at her raw beginnings - ambitious, challenging, and confrontational. A sonic world entirely its own, its sounds, textures, and structures are bristling, tense, and often displacing - the highs and lows of humanity bound together by the human voice - rising with all the intimacy and emotion it allows. Crucially, within its singularity, the album opens a historic lens into the democratic ambitions lying below its era. Though at times difficult to discern, it stands as an important and underacknowledged work within the canon of Minimalism - straying far from the efforts of Cage and his successors. While Monk addresses the voice as instrument - a generator of sound over speech, the diversity of history and culture from which she draws is impossible to avoid. Like America, Key is a melting pot - the traditions of Africa, Asia and India, bound and reimagined with those from Europe - rising together in a new vision for the avant-garde.

With hindsight, the album's title transforms into a clue - a crucial key which opens the door into one of America’s most important sonic artists and the history to which she belongs - offering long overdue reappraisal, consideration, and understanding. A series of works for solo, accompanied (jew's harp and organ) and ensemble voice, Key brings the startling ambitions of another era crashing in. Returned to vinyl after far too many years, Tompkins Square has lovingly reproduced the original 1971 issue.