[ aquarius records — 20th Century Composers ]

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SORRY. This recording documents the pinnacle of the collaborations between vangarde accordionist Oliveros (called the 'godmother of ambient' in the presskit) and electronic magician David Gamper. Layers of crystalline drones and gossamer structures emerge from the modified accordion of Oliveros and Gamper's tense electronic vibrations for a mesmerizing listen.

Previously a quadruple lp, now on double cd in a deluxe oversized package!! Perhaps the only bright side to the passing of one of the most ambitious but relatively unsung figures in early electronic music, is that the archives of hundreds of reels of unreleased recordings of sound experiments, tape compositions, field recordings, cinematic sound effects and�Musique Concrete are just starting to be released to a wider audience. Young Americans did a stellar job with the first Daphne Oram vinyl overview, Oramics, which was a retrospective of her long and varied career from her time as a wartime radio technician to becoming an electronic instrument pioneer and founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Now that her invention, The "Oramics" machine (the first electronic musical instrument designed and built by a woman), has gone on display at the Science Museum in London, Daphne Oram's legacy is finally moving into its rightful place. This deluxe compilation is the first in a planned series of releases that dig deep into Oram's vast recording archive. Painstakingly compiled and restored from over 400 tapes and mastered at Dubplates & Mastering, The Oram Tapes Volume One features 37 previously unheard recordings (a bit less than what was on the vinyl version). While most of the pieces are short, they show a darker and more layered compositional style than what one may be used to from the bigger names of The Radiophonic Workshop. While the typical Workshop compositional bloops and bleeps were often steeped in a science fiction futurity, Oram was more often concerned with the mystery and science of sound composition, and the place where the sounds of machines and nature overlapped. That is probably why her effects reel for the film 2001 sounds more like haunted insects and cathedral-like atmospherics rather than say, robotic whirrs and laser-like phasing. There is a thoughtful and cerebral consideration in her compositions that allows us to imagine and nearly inhabit the world she is building in sound. Quite stunning!

MPEG stream: Just For You
MPEG stream: 2001 Effects Tape 1
MPEG stream: Wool
MPEG stream: Oramics Demonstration (Excerpt)
MPEG stream: Costain Outtake
MPEG stream: For Granada
MPEG stream: Birth of Baby

Wow, What a nice and welcome surprise for early electronic music fans! This 2cd anthology is the first re-issued work from one of the most important and unsung heroes of electronic music, Daphne Oram, co-founder of the BBC Radiophonic workshop. Beginning her career in the forties with the BBC as a "music balancer" (an arduous task of syncing recorded taped music with a live performance feed so that broadcasts would remain uninterrupted in case of war-time blackouts), Oram spent most of her nights fascinated with synthetic sounds and experimenting with oscillators and tape machines, as well as composing unperformed orchestral works and sound pieces for film and play commissions. Promoted to music studio manager, she campaigned for the BBC to provide electronic music facilities for composing music and sound effects using electronic music and musique concrete techniques for use in its programming which led to the founding of the Radiophonic workshop in early 1958. However, her desires to compose music and further her studies and development of synthetic music theory, caused her to leave the BBC a year later. Working off two grants from the Gulbenkian foundation in the 1960's, and supplementing her income through advertising work, she developed her most unique contribution, the Oramics composition machine and the drawn sound technique, an elaborate mechanism that allowed her to create pure sound through the transcription of drawn lines. For being the first woman to direct an electronic music studio as well as the first woman to design and construct an electronic music instrument, her legacy remains largely unnoticed in this male-dominated field. She lectured extensively and wrote one of the most philosophical books on electronic music, called An Individual Note of Music, continuing her developments with early Apple computers until a series of two strokes forced her to retire. She died in 2003. Culled from an extensive archive of compositional pieces, film and play commissions, early sound experiments with the Oramics machine, and advertising jingles, this anthology covers material from the late fifties to the early seventies. Fans of Delia Derbyshire, Raymond Scott and early electronic music enthusiasts of all sorts will find lots to love here. Highly Recommended!!!!

MPEG stream: Birds Of Parallax
MPEG stream: Lego Builds It
MPEG stream: Snow
MPEG stream: Fanfare Of Graphs

Perhaps the only bright side to the passing of one of the most ambitious but relatively unsung figures in early electronic music, is that the archives of hundreds of reels of unreleased recordings of sound experiments, tape compositions, field recordings, cinematic sound effects and�Musique Concrete are just starting to be released to a wider audience. Young Americans did a stellar job with the first Daphne Oram vinyl overview, Oramics, which was a retrospective of her long and varied career from her time as a wartime radio technician to becoming an electronic instrument pioneer and founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Now that her invention, The "Oramics" machine (the first electronic musical instrument designed and built by a woman), has gone on display at the Science Museum in London, Daphne Oram's legacy is finally moving into its rightful place. This deluxe 4lp compilation is the first in a planned series of releases that dig deep into Oram's vast recording archive. Painstakingly compiled and restored from over 400 tapes and mastered at Dubplates & Mastering, The Oram Tapes Volume One features 46 previously unheard recordings cut at 45 rpm for deeper sound quality. While most of the pieces are short, they show a darker and more layered compositional style than what one may be used to from the bigger names of The Radiophonic Workshop. While the typical Workshop compositional bloops and bleeps were often steeped in a science fiction futurity, Oram was more often concerned with the mystery and science of sound composition, and the place where the sounds of machines and nature overlapped. That is probably why her effects reel for the film 2001 sounds more like haunted insects and cathedral-like atmospherics rather than say, robotic whirrs and laser-like phasing. There is a thoughtful and cerebral consideration in her compositions that allows us to imagine and nearly inhabit the world she is building in sound. Quite stunning!

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Perhaps most famous for his 1937 cantata, Carmina Burana (whose "O Fortuna" is the go-to score to represent medieval horror and fascist power in film), our favorite Carl Orff works are actually the musical exercises he developed with Gunild Keetman for educating young children. Developed in the 1920's and popularly known as "shulwerk", or "schoolwork", the music is elemental and combines movement, singing, playing, and improvisation. Often played on what is known as "the Orff instruments": glockenspiels, xylophones, metallophones, drinking glasses, violoncello, bells, cymbals, drums, and the triangle, but also plenty of hand-clapping, knee slapping and feet-stamping, the exercises were largely rhythmic and percussive in nature and were designed for instructors to tailor the material to the students specific needs and playing levels. Instructors were also allowed to add popular children's songs and rhymes from their home-country to the repertoire. Translated from the German by Margaret Murray and performed by the Chorus of the Children's Opera Group, The Speech Ensemble from the Italia Conti School, and The Instrumental Ensemble, this Trunk records reissue was originally released in 2 lp editions in 1958. Most songs are under a minute for a total of 85 songs (for this reissue, the lp version has been distilled to 48 tracks on a single lp, but you get 'em all on the cd version)! This UK version features many nursery rhymes like "Pat-A-Cake" and "Tinker-Tailor", but also has some old British folk songs lincluding the very oldest song "Sumer Is Icumen In" and some creepy ones like "The Witch Scene from Macbeth" and "Tommy's Fallen In The Pond", that give some of the singing a spooky feel. But it also hearkens back to a seemingly lost time, where music education for young children was a serious endeavor available and encouraged for everyone. Delightful!

MPEG stream: Tommy's Fallen In The Pond
MPEG stream: Speech Exercises - Ensemble
MPEG stream: Oliver Cromwell
MPEG stream: Instrumental Pieces VIII
MPEG stream: Bear Dance
MPEG stream: Percussion Exercises III for Drums
MPEG stream: Stones
MPEG stream: Flute Cadenza
MPEG stream: Five Ostinato Pieces V

MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT!! MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT!! MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT!! The above is of course for the benefit of the legions of Mississippi obsessives, that seems to be growing with each and every release. Fans who will buy anything and everything Mississippi, whether it's blues, or gospel, or world music, whether it's African or Greek, classic New Zealand pop, or legendary underground Portland Punk. Which is totally understandable, the guys at Mississippi have great taste, and besides their incredible compilations, and unearthed rarities, they also have a knack for picking out old records that folks have been DYING to get on vinyl. But even if you're not a Mississippi obsessive, this here is well worth checking out. And may be just the disc to convert you to the cult of Mississippi... Here we have a kick ass gospel record from 1963, originally reissued on Arhoolie, now available on Mississippi, ON VINYL. And while we're not super well versed in gospel music, we do dig what we've heard, but very little of what we've heard sounds like the Rev. Louis Overstreet. It's festive and inspirational, but at the same time it's super rocking. Most of the tracks collected here are relentless garage gospel grooves, the guitar and drums locked into killer jams, the guitar occasionally pealing off some wild licks, but for the most part offering up a jangly twangy strum, the congregation clapping in time, and hooting and hollering. The testifying is minimal, and when there are vocals, they are alternately crooned and howled, The Rev.'s voice is gritty and soulful, but even when he's singing, it's the groove, irresistible and unstoppable and most certainly inspired. It does slow down here and there, and gets all super bluesy and soulful, but for the most part, An Evening With is some seriously rollicking and rocking praise-the-Lord good time gospel rhythm and blues! Probably would have been a lot easier to get us to go to church when we were younger if it sounded like this!

A drop-dead gorgeous album of pure tone minimalism from two outstanding Danish composers. Jacob Kirkegaard is a familiar name around these parts, thanks to his impeccable recordings for Touch, channeling quite literally radioactive field recordings and even ear-piercing tones captured from inside his own ear; but Else Marie Pade is a figure who actually towers over her fellow countryman as she's been working with analog electronics and electroacoustic minimalism for close to 60 years. She was quite the bad-ass in her youth, fighting in the Resistance during World War II as an explosives expert (fuck, yeah!), ending up a prisoner of war from 1944 until the end of the war. During that time in the P.O.W. camp, she composed hymns to lift the spirits of the fellow prisoners. Upon release, she began studying piano; and by 1954, she quickly moved into the nascent realm of electronic music and musique concrete, becoming what many have cited as being the first Danish composer of both media. Her sensibility is one that is not dissimilar to that of Eliane Radigue in terms of long-form programs, although Pade seems more interested in tonal slippages akin to somebody like Roland Kayn. This collaborative work is a picture perfect example of what two great artists should create when given the chance to work together. The album is sourced both from Kirkegaard's 'otoacoustic' recordings (those aforementioned recordings of inner-ear frequencies) and from Pade's vault of analog electronic recordings. The six tracks of Svaevninger appear as portraits to cloud formations, an apt metaphor to the ephemeral slippages, crystalline phase-patterned hypnosis, and glassy-eyed suspended tone-floats these two produce. Think Chalk, Derbyshire, Oram, Niblock, Nilsen, Coleclough, and any number of the great electronic drone-artists / minimalists we've championed. A marvelous album!

MPEG stream: Nimbostratus
MPEG stream: Cirrostratus
MPEG stream: Cirrocumulus

Five compositions by video artist Nam June Paik. Long before he became famous for his work in the visual arts, Paik had travelled to both Japan and later to Germany (along side Karlheinz Stockhausen at the Westdeutsche Rundfunk's Studio For Electronic Music)

RealAudio clip: Hommage A John Cage
RealAudio clip: Duett

Charlemagne Palestine has long been one of the pioneers of American Minimalism, tracing back to his '60s performances that rivalled Terry Riley, LaMonte Young, and Tony Conrad in duration, intensity, and transcendent potential. "Maximin" finds Palestine working with David Coulter and Jean-Marie Mathoul to re-intepret / re-mix / re-iterate (or how ever you care to catagorize it). For the most part, Palestine contributed material from his albums "Jamaica Heinekens In Brooklyn," "Schlongo!!!daLUVdrone," and "Karenina," while Coutler and Mathoul added additional drones, found sound textures, illbient breakbeats, and ethnic instrumentation.

RealAudio clip: Schlongo!!!daLuvdrone Revisted 1
RealAudio clip: Schlongo!!!daLuvdrone Revisted 2

Fifty minute single track of classic organ cycle repetitions for fans of Terry Riley, Jon Gibson, Steve Reich.

MPEG stream: A Sweet Quasimodo Part One
MPEG stream: A Sweet Quasimodo Part 2

Volume 2 in Alga Marghen's "The Golden Research" series of Charlemagne recordings from the late '60s to mid '70s. The self-explanatory "Continuous Sound Forms" features two works from Palestine's archives. "Duo Strumming for Two Harpsichords" (1978) is broken into three excerpted duets between Palestine and Elisabeth Freeman who hammer out a continuous tight arpeggiation on two harpsichords. At predetermined times, the duo altered their tight rhythmic patterns to play indeterminant notes, giving a very playful feel to the piece. The title of "Piano Drone" (1972) is a little misleading as the entire piece doesn't exactly coalesce into an extended drone, rather this is a painterly composition of whimsical piano patterns that are washed out with acoustic effects using the piano's sustain pedal.

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SORRY. "The Golden Research" series of previously unpublished works from the Charlemagne Palestine vaults so far comprises two cd volumes and this expensive vinyl item, which features an expanded version of what you get on half of the first cd volume (reviewed elsewhere). The 'late night electronic sonorities' of 1967's "Holy" are here presented in four subtle variations (instead of the two found on the cd version, where the piece is pared with "Alloy"). This piece was based upon creating a drone that harmonized with the din of New York's late night ambience. Using a battery of oscillators that were altered to emit varying degrees of white noise, Palestine generated an effective electric drone device which fluctuates ever so slowly across the two 20 minute variations. Palestine himself described his sound generators as "immense sacred machines humming like gargantuan Tibertan bees." Palestine presents two version of "Holy 1," one version of "Holy 2," and a sound-collage between was commissioned by Gus Solomons for a dance piece at New York University.

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SORRY. "The Golden Research" series of previously unpublished works from the Charlemagne Palestine vaults begins with this volume that documents two distinct bodies of Palestine's work. The first being the 'late night electronic sonorities' of 1967's "Holy" which are presented in two subtle variations. This piece was based upon the creating a drone that harmonized with the din of New York's late night ambience. Using a battery of oscillators that were altered to emit varying degrees of white noise, Palestine generated an effective electric drone device which fluctuates ever so slowly across the two 20 minute variations. Palestine himself described his sound generators as "immense sacred machines humming like gargantuan Tibertan bees." The second half of the cd features "Alloy", which is one of those pieces that qualified Palestine as one of great minimalists from the 1960s. Working with Tony Conrad, Bob Feldman, and Deborah Glaser, Palestine accompanies the electric drones from "Holy" with extended glossalalic vocals, the clatter of various chimes, and Conrad bowing one very long amplified string. An excellent historical document.

This is one of three separate shards of electronic music history (Ashley, Neuhaus, and Palestine) recently unearthed by Italian audio archaeologists Alga Marghen. The disc of early Charlemagne Palestine electronic works ("late night recordings" at the NYU Intermedia center on the Buchla 100 and 200 analog synths, done between 1965 and 1970) is probably the most "listenable" of these three reissues. It's also volume 3 in Alga Marghen's "The Golden Research" Palestine archive series. Listenable, yet certainly scarily dark and droney and hissy, conjuring fear and sudden violence, far from the pretty, hypnotic bliss of some of the man's later work. Inspired by everyday refrigerator hum and race car motors, but way more "late night", this material must predate his obsession with cute stuffed animals! MPEG Download: "Tymbral For Pran Nath" [/audio/palestinetymbral.mp3]

MPEG stream: Tymbral For Pran Nath

"Begun in the spring of 1997, this work came out of the idea of traveling with an electronic drone on a ghetto blaster and re-recording it in different situations in many countries. After several months of unsuccessful experiments, I decided to record different situations or soundscapes first and then to superimpose a drone later. I made recordings in 20 different environments including Los Angeles, Paris, Nice, Berlin, New York City, Rotterdam, and Lisbon, but far and away the most impressive, expansive, and sonically interesting was the recording I made on the 5th of September 1997 on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn during the Jamaica Day Parade; the yearly tradition where more than 2 million Island people who live and around the New York City area meet to dance, sing, eat, and drink for an entire afternoon... With a small DAT player and a small stereo microphone, I walked throughout the festival very slowly for several hours to let the ambient sounds of each block naturally change in real time. The 60 minute segment on this record is played without any editing, but superimposed upon this extract I have composed three series of drone textures... All together this work creates a dialogue between pure and mixed electronics of my long continuum tradition and the real-time ambient sounds of a traditional urban ethnographic popular festival. The results have no extra-musical philosophies behind them." -- Charlemagne Palestine

When just a precocious lad of 15, Charlemagne Palestine began playing the bells in the church tower next to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He claims that he played those bells everyday for the next six years, and this physical involvement with the What I want to know is who in their right mind would let some 15 year old kid into a church tower to hammer on some incredibly expensive bells everyday for six years!?!?

RealAudio clip: Music For Big Ears 2
RealAudio clip: Music For Big Ears 4

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SORRY. NYC drone-pioneer Palestine takes us on a 71-minute trip of shimmering bliss, utilizing not his usual Bosendorfer piano but rather a baroque organ. First realized in 1979, recorded in 1988, and finally now released. "Schlingen-Blangen" is a sustained organ drone in which Palestine manipulates the timbre subtly throughout the piece. Very reminscent of the works of Palestine's contemporary La Monte Young. To be filed under "disembodied organ sonority"!

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SORRY. "Schlongo!daLUVdrone" was a Valentine's Day performance that Palestine gave as a part of the Beyond The Pink performance festival held in LA in 1998. His contribution was a pipe organ solo concert at the Hollywood Methodist Church. While Palestine's liner notes do well to explain the process, his grammar sucks: "I began my investigation pipe by pipe creating sonorities putting small folded paper nuggets between the keys a continuous sound object starting with a fundamental then a perfect fifth then the octave above and gradually building enormous sonorities over several hours with tens then hundreds then thousands of overtones interacting with the beats creating a rhythmic fabric of overwhelming complexity." Of course our grammar often leaves something to be desired too... but what are you gonna do?

And, the title should also say, lots and lots of stuffed animals! 'Cause these three discs of "strumming music" are by eccentric, minimalist composer Charlemagne Palestine, known for his love of stuffed animals, large numbers of which often adorn his grand piano in performance, as you can see in some of the photos that illustrate this release. He's even better known, though, precisely for this incredible "strumming music" of his. Lengthy, continuous, repetitious, dense note clouds, resonant with overtones, totally trance-inducing, apparently inspired by the sounds of carillon church bells. Disc one of this set, recorded in 1974, is the only one previously issued, simply as "Strumming Music". A typically hypnotic, very physical solo performance by Palestine, it's one 52 minute, 14 second track of utter Bosendorfer bliss (Bosendorfer being Palestine's preferred make of grand piano). Palestine varies the intensity over the course of the piece, subtly shifting in volume and speed throughout, rising and falling and rolling on and on; fans of such artists Steve Reich, Tony Conrad, Terry Riley, Lubomyr Melnyk and The Necks all ought to check this out, especially if you haven't already become aurally acquainted with Palestine's work. The other two discs here consist of previously unissued material, one being a 1977 recording of Palestine's Strumming Music for harpsichord, performed by Betsy Freeman (which replaces the warmer tones of the Bosendorfer with the tinnier, more brittle ones of that baroque instrument); the other being a special string arrangement of Strumming Music, also from '77, organized by John Adams at the San Francisco Conservatory, performed by a group of twelve student musicians, uncredited here. It was rare for Palestine to allow others to perform his Strumming. He (with a little help from his stuffed animal friends) was The One to really do it, most ecstatically, at least judging from the length of the disc he plays on, which is quite a bit longer than the other two, which clock in at 35'24" and 24'26" respectively, but both of those are quite compelling as well. We like the "ringing" nature of the harpsichord one, it begins to sound almost electronic. Meanwhile, the string ensemble version features relaxing, shimmering drones, and also builds up to truly dramatic heights. Packaged in a triple-digi, with a booklet of liner notes by Palestine's colleague Ingram Marshall.

MPEG stream: Strumming For Bosendorfer Piano
MPEG stream: Strumming For Harpsichord

We think the mystery suggested in the title is why this is the first ever recorded collaboration between these two giants of improvised left-field minimalist drone. Both Tony Conrad and Charlemagne Palestine, key figures in early American minimalism and the New York avant-garde of the early seventies had only performed three times together previously and since reuniting in Belgium in 2001, hadn't even seen each other in three decades. What's equally amazing is that neither one fully dominates this extended performance. Palestine's multiple crystalline organ drones graft neatly with Conrad's bowed pulsations from his modified 5 string violin, eventually intensifying with blistering shimmers and burning organic keyboard crescendos before falling into subdued space and void. There the two sweep the dust off and begin to spar with each other all over again, getting into some heated free-music territory culminating in Palestine's delayed vocal drones and Conrad's blissful undulating vibrations. Gorgeous!

MPEG stream: An Aural Symbiotic Mystery 1
MPEG stream: An Aural Symbiotic Mystery 2

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SORRY. Sure there's a novelty to a collaborative album recorded by the figureheads from two generations of uncompromising (and at times brutal) minimalism, but this is not your garden variety resuscitation of crotchety '60s minimalism by Jim O'Rourke. When Charlemagne Palestine and Pan Sonic set organs, oscillators, and random noise generators to constantly warble for over an hour, their intentions are far from benevolent. This album of uneasy listening was commissioned by the VRPO Radio in the Netherlands and is limited to 1000 copies. If you blink, you'll probably miss it.

Had Fractal not dusted off this gem of French electronic composition, there's a good chance this disc might have found its way back into circulation through elusive Icelandic cd-r label Creel Pone. Bernard Parmegiani was one of the many composers who cut their teeth at the highly influential INA-GRM studio / label / laboratory of sound, alongside the likes of Pierre Henry, Luc Ferrari, and Xenakis. Favoring an acousmatic strategy that reveals sound in a manner that sublimates its origins, Parmegiani is best known for his grandiose La Creation Du Monde whereby the composer attempts to address the sound that predates the Big Bang, as well as its polyphonous explosion through a constantly spiralling thrum of electronic vibration. Chants Magnetiques (which translates as Magnetic Fields, and Fractal is quick to point out that this album precedes the Jean Michel Jarre album of the same name by several years) is easily the darkest album in Parmegiani's body of work; and perhaps, the paranoiac qualities of Chants Magnetiques were the reason for its obscure status for so long. The opening round of erratic electric squiggles slides into a languid drone of sustained strings, whilst a robotic hammering strikes against what sounds like springloaded doors. Occasionally chipper but usually damaged electronic percolations and atonal blasts of prog organs intermingle with sheet metal cacophony and convulsive buzzings, only to sulk into subterranean layers of sound haunted by mad scientist chords on the organ and spooky atmospherics that never sound cheesy in spite of the references. The entire composition is executed with an incredible precision and complexity, easily positioning itself as a clear influence upon the later work of Autechre. One not to miss.

MPEG stream: Vibrations
MPEG stream: Pulsion

Listening to "Da Natura Sonorum" it's easy to understand where Autechre borrowed their mutable rhythms from. Often cited as a huge influence upon those figureheads of current abstract electronica, Bernard Parmegiani emphasized the "instantaneousness of the ephemeral and the mobility of the repetitive" within his fusionist compositions between musique concrete and live instrumentation.

RealAudio clip: Conjugaison du Timbre
RealAudio clip: Pleins et Delies

We've been a fan of French musique concrete composer, Bernard Parmegiani for awhile now. His sound engineer's background brings forth a stunningly unique view of music-making through which he combines improvisational intuition with an excellent sense of compositional form. JazzEx is a collection of four of his earliest works: "JazzEx" (1966), a composition for electronic tape and Jazz Quartet from the 1966 Festival de Royan; "Pop Eclectic" (1969), an electro-acoustique divertimento that mixes natural and synthetic sounds and was composed for the Peter Foldes movie; "Du Pop a l'Ane" (1969), a plunderphonics sound collage using pop and symphonic sounds; "Et Apres" (1973), an amazing electronic tango composition featuring Michel Portal on bandoneon. This is an important period of Parmegiani's work, noting his first major steps in this eclectic sound language. Highly recommended!

MPEG stream: Pop Eclectic
MPEG stream: Du Pop a l'Ane

Bernard Parmegiani is a French musique concrete / electronic music composer who has worked extensively with the influential INA GRM recording studio / label. While a number of 20th Century composers avidly footnote their work with dense historical references and conceptual overviews, Parmegiani favors the acousmatic approach (currently espoused by Francisco Lopez) of creating a hallucinatory sound without revealing what caused it. Such a philosophy favoring mystery over intention is perfectly suited to the cosmologically tinged composition "Le Creation Du Monde" (1982-1984). Parmegiani expresses the cosmic beginning through gradual introductions and transformations of dense, yet ephemeral fragments of sound which mutate and coalesce into warm, buzzing timbres and aqueous percolations. While the tonalities to "Le Creation Du Monde" are comparable to Xenakis's "Persepolis" or Stockhausen's "Mikrophonie," Parmegiani's volatile collage aesthetic falls much closer to the non-academic forms of early Nurse With Wound. Good work.

RealAudio clip: Instant 0
RealAudio clip: Jeux De Confrigurations
RealAudio clip: Polyphonie

"Le Memoire Des Sons" collects three pieces from the French musique concrete composer Bernard Parmegiani, including "Capture Ephemere" (1967), "Sons-Jeu" (1987), and "La Memoire des Sons" (2001). As with his previous works including his masterpiece "La Creation Du Monde," Parmegiani follows an acousmatic approach to contextualizing how his heavily processed sounds are to be perceived. Despite the span of 34 years in between all of these recordings, there is a remarkable similarity in how Parmegian fractures the source material into generative particles tumbling, exploding, flanging, dissolving, sparkling, and timestretching into very plastic sound constructions, that clearly follow the strict rules of what musique concrete should be according to the precepts of the French state sponsored institution INA-GRM.

RealAudio clip: Capture Ephemere

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SORRY. Odd-ball music conrete from this legendary French composer. This disc presents archival material from 1966-1973, thereby predating the pop cut-ups of Christian Marclay by a good bit. The four pieces here feature a patchwork of styles, at times fused with symphonic elements, or having free jazz musicians play over prerecorded tapes of electro-acoustic music. Important, influential, and a fun listen, too!

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More deep new age drones from this New Zealand artist, this time focussed on the universal canopy of the sky. Akash in Sanskrit means sky or ether and all that it embraces, but it's also the name of India's medium-range, surface-to-air missile defense system. That duality of meaning informs these long-form drone compositions exploring the realm of atmospheres that encompass all life as well as embodying a complete and total emptiness. What we like most about Parson's work is the natural quality of sound he gets from pure synthesis, evoking a heavy weightlessness that is meditative and peaceful with just enough edge to create a slightly unsettling feeling. Fans of Klaus Schulze, Ashra and Tangerine Dream should definitely check this out.

MPEG stream: Akash
MPEG stream: Wind Horse
MPEG stream: Sky Spirits

David Parsons is not as well known outside of New Age circles as say Deuter or Kitaro, but in the case of this New Zealand artist who's been releasing music since the early eighties, obscurity in that particular genre is an asset rather than a liability. Parsons makes the kind of New Age music we really dig a lot around here, the kind that exceeds the boundaries of the genre into areas of experimental drone, pastoral Kosmiche music and 20th century composition. Like Eberhard Schoener (another krauty 'New Ager' we love), Parsons is known mostly for a cross-cultural fusion of Eastern and Western musical forms that feature lots of ethnic instruments and field recordings, on Earthlight, Parsons only uses synthesizers, where he programmed in his own sounds built completely from scratch. Deep bottom-heavy Ur-drones, and soft phased in high tones converge on fields of repetitive gamelan-ish arppegiations and filtered washes of bell tones. Really Nice!

MPEG stream: Earthlight
MPEG stream: Altai Himalaya
MPEG stream: Corona

As we mentioned in the Pulse Emitter Meditative Music reviews, we do get a lot of folks here looking for cds for meditation, massage and yoga, and while we can get down with the concept of meditative music, we can't always get past the aesthetic cheesiness inherent in most music specifically designed for this purpose. You know what were talking about, right? Those photoshopped jewel tones, that terrible Hindu/Sanskrit-like font, and the gross overuse of words like "dharma", "kundalini", and "chakra". So thank God, there are musicians like David Parsons who still work within the new age genre but don't completely fall into its trappings, making worthwhile music that both experimental drone heads and meditative music seekers can get behind. Maybe you'll recall his Earthlight disc we liked last year. Now, on Jyoti, Parsons takes us deep into some heavy inner earth drones, low temple bells and cavernous tonal soundscapes. Each track over 9 minutes of slow monumental and drifting resonance with no unnecessary or excessive melodic elements. If you need music to get your chakras aligned, we recommend this!

MPEG stream: Incarnation
MPEG stream: They Come

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. Music inspired by the early Russian Orthodox Church. Graceful and minimal as his music always is. Thick book of liner notes.

World premiere recording.

The obi reads: Composer, theorist, inventor of musical instruments, and one of the most colorful characters of 20th century music, Harry Partch broke with Western tradition and forged a new music based on a more primal, corporeal integration of the elements of speech, rhythm and performance. This is the first complete recording of one of Partch's earliest extant compositions. Featuring Ted Mook and Stephen Kalm.

Seems like it's about time that Harry Partch's recordings should be permanently available and not continually cycle in and out of print. If he hasn't yet been "canonized" in the eyes of academia, he's been so by the rest of the world by now. If all other reasons were eliminated, the mere mention of "builders of unusual instruments" puts Harry Partch at the top of most people's heads. His gorgeously hand crafted and other worldly sounding instruments were built not on a whim, but out of necessity. Which brings to mind the second reason why Harry Partch resides at the top of so many lists: microtonal music. No one before him had a so thoroughly codified and premeditated way of dividing the "octave" into harmonic and melodic divisions. 43 scale degrees is what he eventually settled on, which is why he had to either heavily modify or build from scratch his instruments. But his chosing 43 tones and his handling of them wasn't just for effect, like many of those composers who preceded him. Most of his compositions didn't even use all 43 notes. Instead Partch had developed his own scales and modes -- derived from ancient Greece along as well as from around the globe. His compositions were a veritable hodge podge of influences: American folk music, Chinese classical, African, Greek, Balinese, Javanese, and on and on. To top it off, the musicans performing his works were expected to sing and dance while they played their respective instruments. And while he was a demanding composer with very specific and strongly argued opinions about music (his book Genesis Of A Music is not only an in depth look at his own theories, but a scathing critique of western classical music), his compositions were largely quite accessible. The tracks here were recorded between 1950 and 1953 with the exception of "Ulysses At The Edge" which was recorded in 1958 and originally released on Harry Partch's own Gate Five record label. Oh, that's another thing, he was probably the first DIY record producer / label owner / mail order business. The majority of Partch's instruments were either percussion, in the form of large and varied marimba-like instruments and zithers. One particular marimba, the Marimba Eroica had only two notes, a resonater 8 feet long and was played with huge and heavy padded mallets. You can imagine how that one sounds. And yet all of his instruments are not only unique sounding, but beautiful and haunting as well. The Cloud Chamber Bowls were a set of glass carboys cut in half and tuned to Partch's scale and sounds as close to a glass gong as anything could. But the most fucked up of all is the Chromelodeon, a heavily modified reed pump organ that sounds like the devil itself when it plays clusters of notes or simple chords. Along with Ulysses, Volume 1 of the Harry Partch collection includes Eleven Intrusions, a song cycle utilizing ten of Partch's instruments accompanying voice; Plectra & Percussion Dances, a suite of three unrelated pieces utilizing the entire Partch orchestra of instruments. These newly reprinted CRI editions come with hefty booklets with archival photos and extensive liner notes.

MPEG stream: Castor & Pollux
MPEG stream: Ring Around The Moon

Four of Harry Partch's earliest compositions, works he later grouped together as The Wayard, comprise the first half of this collection. The four pieces: U.S. Highball, San Francisco, The Letter and Barstow were written between 1941 and 1943 after Partch received a Guggenheim Fellowship. This after he'd spent much of the previous 10 years hoboing around the country, picking up odd jobs as he could get them throughout the depression. It's no wonder then that the topics of these pieces have much, if not everything, to do with his experiences during this period. These are classic Partch, combining social commentary and humor to create odd oratorios (the texts of these pieces are included in the accompanying booklet) that are spoken as much as they are sung and done so with that quintessential vocal style that just smacks of the 50's. I think that's what makes these recordings sound all that much more interesting and odd. You expect the voices you hear to be pitching Listerine or a Chevy Corvair, not kicking it with an iconoclast hobo composer. The final composition here, And On The Seventh Day Petals Fell In Petaluma, is a radical contrast to these earlier pieces and makes for a nice juxtaposition for this collection. Completed in 1966, it's one of the few pieces Partch composed that is strictly instrumental and completely lacking any kind of "program". Further, it utilizes the entire cache of the now fully realized Partch orchestra of instruments.

MPEG stream: U.S. Highball
MPEG stream: And On The Seventh Day Petals Fell In Petaluma

The choice of Partch works selected for this third volume of his music highlight the corporeal aspects of his art: be it incorporating dance and drama into his compositions or scoring for films. One piece, "Rotate The Body In All Of Its Planes" (1961), was even written for gymnasts while performing at the Collegiate Gymnastics Championship at the University of Illinois Charles Pond and later preserved onto film by Madeline Tourtelot. "Windsong" (1958) is another composition for a film collaboration with Tourtelot. The first piece on the disc, "The Dreamer That Remains" (1972) was Partch's last completed work. Commissioned by long time friend Betty Freeman, The Dreamer was a largely autobiographical work, detailing childhood memories, his hoboing days and even outing himself to the world -- something that caused Freeman some consternation at the time. The final piece, "Water! Water! -- An Intermission With Prologues And Epilogues" (1961), is a satyrical piece of theater postulating that the greatest satisfaction for the audience in any performance was the arrival of intermission when they could finally leave their seats for some refreshments.

MPEG stream: The Dreamer That Remains
MPEG stream: Water! Water!

Love him or... don't love him ("hate him" seems a little extreme for a man as benign as Harry Partch), he had to have been the greatest idealist in the history of Western music -- not to mention the greatest iconoclast. It's not enough to disassemble the chromatic scale and build an entirely new harmonic theory around a division of some 43 tones to the octave or assemble an entire orchestra of insanely gorgeous hand built instruments, but he also insisted on a corporeal execution of almost all his works. The Bewitched was the first large scale composition in which the musicians were also expected to sing and dance as they played. Not something that most performers or audiences would balk at today, but this was 1957, not 1967. Even today his music sounds completely unreal and haunting. Bewitched begins with an 18 minute prologue, an aural genesis of his music. It begins with just the rumblings of the marimba eroica, the two note bass marimba, which are almost inaudible unless you have some serious subwoofer action. One by one the entire cast of the Partch orchestra chimes in on different melodic themes, and building in counterpoint with one another at each turn. Musically it's an extremely strong composition, with great thematic development, beautiful and haunting melodies (as wonderful as any in his other compositions). One of the greatest aspects of The Bewitched however is Partch's treatment of the human voice. Whether done intentionally to stress the "primitive" aspirations of his music, or for lack of a worthy libretto, all the vocals are wordless chanting and singing. I know a lot of people can't seem to get into Partch's works (like "Revelation In A Courthouse Park" and "Barsto") because they find the lyrics corny. Those who can't get into his music because of this might want to give Partch a second chance with The Bewitched. The voice of the performer playing The Witch, the lead role in The Bewitched, sounds an awful lot like Yma Sumac. In fact the whole compositions sounds a lot like a more academic Martin Denny scoring an episode of Star Trek (Shatner, not Stewart for all you young-uns) -- what with all the marimba-like instruments. And yet in sections which feature clarinet, piccolo and cello Partch's themes begin to sound surprisingly pastoral, like his antithetical contemporary Copland. Which is not to make Partch look like some stuffed shirt. I don't think anyone would confuse his music for the offspring of a tenured faculty at some ivy league school. One need look no further than the titles for each scene to see that Partch's sense of humor wouldn't be caught dead in academia. For instance, scene five is titled "Visions Fill the Eyes of a Defeated Basketball Team in the Shower Room", or scene ten: "The Cogniscenti Are Plunged into a Demonic Descent While at Cocktails". Like the other discs in this Partch reissue series this one comes with a nice fat booklet with historical and biographical notes, photos and detailed descriptions of each scene in the performance (which, by the way, is the original 1957 monaural recording). Highly recommended!

The Harry Partch vinyl reissue campaign continues with this sprawling double vinyl reissue of Partch's master theatrical work, Delusion Of The Fury. Written between 1963 and 1969 and combining an ensemble playing Partch's unique instruments with operatic vocalists, mime, dance, lighting and staging, it was designed to create an experience more akin to the ancient ritual theater of the Greeks than traditional or modern stagecraft. Over the course of two acts, the first tragic, the second more comedic are intertwining stories of conflict and reconciliation. The first, based on a Japanese Noh play, is about a prince's pilgrimage to make amends for killing another prince in battle. The prince and the ghost meet, reliving the death scene over and over again until they necessarily come to a point where both life and death have to reconcile each other. The second act is from an African tale about a deaf hobo and a mother searching for her missing son in which a simple misunderstanding arises and is exacerbated by the law who thinks the two parties are merely a married couple having a tiff. Instead of fighting the judges decision, they decide to become a family. So again, there is a reconciliation with death and a reconciliation with life. The music using the elaborate instruments and 43 tone scale that Partch invented creates amazing microtonal bell sounds and gamelan like rhythms with slow chords underlying the faster paced rhythms. They act in part like the forces of nature that lead the characters through their various predicaments, and emphasize the stories larger tragic and comic resonances. There is nothing in modern music that quite resembles Harry Partch's one of a kind musical vision and it's great to see these available on vinyl once again.

Harry Partch's ingenious and prodigious musical output can be a bit too much to wrap your mind around, especially considering his vastly unique and maverick musical theories involving microtonalities and the arsenal of unique hand-crafted instruments he used to create them. But all it takes to reel us in, is just to look at all the amazing instruments on display on the back-cover: The Cloud-Chamber Bowls, the Chromelodeon, the Diamond Marimba, the Kithara, the Harmonic Canon, and an odd array of metal cylinders called The Spoils of War, amongst many other musical curiosities. Even if you are not quite sure what they sound like, you just know they sound like no other instrument could. There's been plenty of Partch collections, but it's really nice to just get a small but lovely dose on vinyl especially for the uninitiated, for whom a large collection may be too overwhelming. The World of Harry Partch, originally released in 1969 on Columbia Masterworks, was the first introduction of Harry Partch's music to the larger world, and still serves as the best starting point to immerse oneself into the Partch universe. Three long form compositions, "Daphne of The Dunes", "Barstow" and "Castor & Pollux", each take us into a different realm of his pantheon of influences from soundpieces for theatre and dance, his folkloric ruminations on hobo life (he lived life as a hobo during the Great Depression), and his great dedication to non-Western musical scales and ideas culled from Chinese, Indian and Greek musical forms. Partch's intensive compositions and exacting instructions for his performers can be an acquired taste for some (the vocal intonations on "Barstow" for instance, have a definite beat poet vibe that hasn't particularly aged well in our opinion, but it's also the shortest track!). But the gamelan-ish bell tones, plucked string runs and metallic percussive noises on his longer compositions are often quite eerily beautiful! Yet, this is definitely not "free" music, and though we appreciate Partch's considerable genius, we can't help but wonder what those instruments would sound like in the hands of latter day free players like No Neck Blues Band or even a group like Taj Mahal Travellers. Still, a highly worthy addition to any seeker of other-worldly and eccentric musical forms!

RealAudio clip: Castor & Pollux