String Quartet Describing The Motions Of Large Real Bodies
(Alga Marghen) Used CD $8.00
Originally composed in 1972 — for an opera based on the text of “In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women” — when significant changes in electronic instrumentation were just beginning, and recorded at the Center for Contemporary Music, Oakland, California, that same year, Ashley’s twenty-minute piece calls for an electronic orchestra of forty-two sound-producing modules, where the string quartet makes intentional but unpremeditated streams and pulses like pitched clicks, which go directly to a set of four loudspeakers, but are also delayed electronically and sent to a series networks activated when original sounds and delayed sound coincide. One version of “How Can I Tell the Difference?” uses electronic orchestra sounds and other collages ingredients, such as reverberations and motorcycles sounds inside San Francisco’s underground labyrinth of concrete tunnels constructed by the military in the 1930s. On a second version from 1973, a solo string player opens and closes the sound gates to electronic reverberations and prerecorded sounds running continuously with the performance. With eight-page booklet of scores and liner notes by Ashley.
Wave Train
(Alga Marghen - plana-B 5NMN.020) CD $25.00
1998 collection of groundbreaking experimental compositions dating from 1958 through 1968 by Austrian-born American composer, assisted by David Tudor (piano) on “Canons,” supported on percussion by Christoph Caskel. Prepared piano piece “Ricecar,” with its spacious and ambiguous narrative, is performed by Behrman himself, while the album’s otherworldly title track is a feedback-driven tapestry of drone performed live with Gordon Mumma. “Sounds For A Film By Bob Watts” feels incredibly modern, a template for microsound composers for years to come, joining environmental recordings with mimetic synthesizer sound designs, which seem to melt into the broader soundscape like weird, metallic insects.
Metal Meditations
(Alga Marghen) Used LP $15.00
“Three pieces extracted from a performance recorded at Merce Cunnigham’s studio, performed by David Behrman on electronics with the sound of dancers’ feet on wood floor in the background, against minimal yet plangent bell strikes beautifully recorded to a quadrophonic microphone array. The fourth piece, recorded in Italy, 1977, has a slight, rippling, almost wood-blocky timbre and tribalistic rhythm; the B-side recorded at Charlie Morrow Studio, incorporates the sound of footsteps creaking on wooden floor with strange, radiant metal tones; the final piece is outdoors in Cambridge, MA in 1978.” Second edition from 1997 with cover printed in black.
Solo 1975-1980
(Alga Marghen - plana-J 19TES.153) LP $28.00 (Out-of-stock)
Previously unreleased recordings by founding member of Smegma and one half of The Tenses. Hammered dulcimer, tape loops, thrift store records, homemade synthesizer, electric guitar, saxophone, mouth sounds, and manipulated Christian radio broadcasts. Numbered edition of 188.
Nei Mari del Sud, Musica in Secca
(Alga Marghen) Used CD $25.00
“The former version of Nei mari del Sud was originally conceived as acoustic theater that accompanied an installation staged on June 9, 1982, during the international contemporary festival Musicalia at Teatro Carcano, Milan. In this stage installation, Marchetti expanded for the first time on a larger scale the same figurative scheme that usually marks his major work in progress: a series of installations invariably entitled ‘Musiche da camera,’ where the ‘icon’ of a piano defines its role in a seemingly paradoxical context. In the scenery of ‘Nei mari del Sud,’ as shown in the photographic sequence reproduced on the CD fold-out, the black carcass of a grand piano appears on the surface of a large expanse of sea, artificially re-created with a shapeless heap of bluish tissue-paper. In the background, the slow, progressive unsticking of the blue paper-curtain, accidentally caused by the floodlight’s heat, configures the impeding threat of a gigantic wave on the point of completely submerging the scene. The acoustic décor projected for this installation invades through twelve loudspeakers set in a semicircle in the rear of the audience playing out-of-phase tapes. Included foldout with photo documentation, an essay by Gabriele Bonomo, a testimony by Robert Ashley and a poster.
De Musicorum Infelicitate
(Alga Marghen) Used CD $25.00
While listening to these “Ten Pieces in the Form of Painful Variations” from 2001, each one with the precise duration of six minutes, you will realize that music, this extremely dense sonority close to the pulverization limit, is talking about itself. Sealed
Negative Sound Study
(Alga Marghen) Used LP (one-sided) $28.00
Remaining unheard for thirty-three years, Negative Sound Study was composed in 1969 directly on a Buchla 100-System at the Intermedia Centre of the New York University, fulfilling Palestine’s interest in creating an enormous, sonorous, three-dimensional sculptural canvas in mid-air using electronically produced sounds. The first experiments were done with simple sine tone generators emitting pure sound waves without overtones. With access to more complex systems, it was constructed using the sine, sawtooth, and square wave oscillators in a fluid mix in which the addition and filtering of overtones and white noise created sonorities of constantly shifting timbre and weight. De rigueur Alga Marghen seam split on top edge of jacket. Edition of 290
Look'n For Ya
(Alga Marghen - plan-S 20TES.154) LP $28.00 (Out-of-stock)
Primitive, suburban, anti-hippie yoont recorded in the mid-1970s. Guests include Wild Man Fischer and Turkey Mon (a C.B. radio operator whose high-power transmitter signal was picked-up by the tape machine while the band was recording). Edition of 200
Abacus Incognito
(Alga Marghen) LP $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
Neo-primitive-suburban-folk music recorded in Temple City and Pasadena 1974 and 1975 by Ace Farren Ford, Ju Suk Reet Meate, Cheez-It-Ritz Chuck-O Fats (D.K.), Amazon Bambi, Dennis Duck, Craig, Jason, Peter, Bev, and a few others, all doing their best to avoid song forms. Fearless group improvisational vocals shape-shift through operatic show tunes, spirit visions and visits to a delirium motel room, contrasted by the title track featuring poetry by Dennis Duck (Human Hands, Dream Syndicate) accompanied by the family stereo console record player / radio unit and conventional instruments to create “a strangely unique non-jamming sound.” Edition of 200