Fanfare and Contrapunctus / Imago
(Pan - PAN12) LP $27.00 (Out-of-stock)
Fanfare & Contrapunctus (1976) were made at the newly opened electronic studio at the Sydney Conservatorium, before the advent of music computer technology. The source material derives from free improvisations by Wishart and Martin Mayes using “soft trumpets,” pop-guns, French Horn and virtuoso eating noises, plus recordings of birdsong and other environmental sources. Imago (2002) metamorphoses the single “clink” of two whisky glasses into birdsong, a junkyard gamelan, the ocean and the human voice, but never entirely abandons its links to this minimal source. The piece was made using sound transformation software written by the composer, available through the Composers Desktop Project, and the original source sound was taken from Jonty Harrison’s “et ainsi de suite.” 140-gram vinyl, color jacket, silkscreened PVC sleeve. Edition of 500.
Journey Into Space
(Paradigm Discs) CD $13.50
Composed between 1970 and ’72 at York University (in one of the UK’s first ever electronic music studios), Journey Into Space was Wishart’s first release. Privately pressed as two separate LPs in 1973, the album credits forty-eight different participants with junk and toys, bike bells, squeeze horns, bottles, metal tubes, combs, flute and brass sections, everyday field recordings, scraps of NASA Apollo transmissions, multitracking, editing, vocal acrobatics and musique concrète. Griddle-fried immediacy for fans of LAFMS-style communal yip.
Machine
(Paradigm Discs) CD $17.00
Completed in 1971, before Journey Into Space (but released after), Machine is the first major work by Trevor Wishart. It was composed at York University and was originally issued on vinyl as three sides of Electronic Music From York 3xLP in 1973. Like Journey Into Space, Machine makes use of a large number of volunteer contributors, mostly from the student body at York. With this recording, however, no instruments are used. Instead, it is entirely made up of spoken text and carefully directed improvising choirs that take their lead from prerecorded factory sounds. These are extensively mixed and edited with yet more collected machine sounds and other sources of musique concrète, as well as occasional use of basic electronic sources. The scale of this work, and the degree of preparation involved in scoring it, seem to have more resonance with the world of theater or film rather than tape composition. Much of Wishart's early work involved the use of musicians and artists being directed to perform in new ways, outside of their usual remit. A combination of late ’60s openness, detailed scores that provide frameworks for improvisation and slavish editing yield this incomparable sound work. With a continuous playing time of one hour, the wild and previously unexplored terrain covered by this pioneering example of British experimental music moves through oceanic calm to earsplitting factory mayhem.