Electronic music foundation

will try and get this book. thx.

really looking forward to their re-release of Cage & Hiller's 'HPSCHD'. (Lejaren Hiller's "Nightmare Music" is one of my favorite yet to be re-released albums of concrete from the early 60's, I hope they get around to that one next)

Laurie Spiegel - Obsolete Music (takes a while for all of it to sink in, but once it did, this became one of my favorite records of the last four years, ranges from pretty roedelius like clouds of consonant sinewaves to gliding arpeggios to monstrous Ligeti-like walls of sound -- the last piece on the disc is a monster)

Hugh Le Caine - order immediately, it is brilliant. 20 minutes or so of prime electroacoustic minatures, the rest of the disc are given over to demonstrations of his home built instruments. not unlike some of Raymond Scott's abstract Electronium material, but involving concrete elements.

Schaeffer - L'Oeuvre Musicale - of course.

Herbert Brun - 4 CD's - these are interesting. 'Sawdust' is primitive computer music, reminded me of the recent gameboy nanoloop improv stuff, but obviously a lot more rigorous & flexible in its options. If you're getting one, get 'Language, Message, Drummage', which has 'Futility 1964' and some other challenging things

Ferrari - a great disc. Henry's approach, but taken to new levels of hyperactivity, stuffed with constantly exploding details (whereas Henry was more content to stay in one place for a while). these pieces are the exact opposite of his later longform pieces, a good overview of what he was up to before 'presque rien no. 1'.

John Cage - Bird Cage ('s okay)

Trevor Wishart - Red Bird / Anticredos (these are the pieces that put him on the map, following many directions laid down by 'gesang der jungliche' in sound morphing between acoustic and concrete)

George Anthiel - Ballet Mecanique (good version)

Larry Austin - Octo Mixes (didn't like the original material here much, which is disappointing -- his early works like 'Caritas' are psychedelic & extreme, but this disc has a great remastered version of Cage's 'Williams Mix' -- the only other known version to date is the room recording from the 25th Anniversary concert, which includes the 2 minutes of rioting applause/booing at the end -- it's nice to have a cleanly mixed version)

want to check out Toop's 'Not Necessarily English Music' but it's fucking expensive

I really wanna get the Laurie Spiegel and Trevor Wishart discs next.

Oh, they used to have a small mail-order section of stuff from non-affiliated labels, but that appears to have gone away. at least, I can't seem to access it from that link Julio provided. Maybe it was at a different URL? I picked up some good stuff from them once upon a time, namely a bunch of the not-always-easy-to-locate BVHaast Acousmatrix titles. They had good, speedy service.

yeah I was looking at this last night but couldn't see the order form, but there's always forced exposure (they take their time though grr!).

'The Xanakis disc with the Electro-Acoustic Music lp is essential'

what's in the LP?

'Schaeffer - L'Oeuvre Musicale - of course'

not sure abt that - like I said, I have disc 1- and while I love the idea of concrete, I just think that the way he realized it is fine but got tedious after a while, he seemed to exhaust the ideas of concrete as abstract after one or two tracks (whereas that delaurenti disc has that extra content- what's around the event- that's missing here).

I forget the precise names, 'etude in black', 'etude in purple', tracks 3-5 of the noise studies, those are magic for me. much more than the tooting train piece.

the incredible 'I wasted my life' interview is here.

when I say the Schaeffer discs are 'essential' this of course does not apply to the majority of casual music listeners. but electronic musicians, certainly, and music critics, definitely.

The lo-fi-ness put me off.

(especially the last week or so, yeesh)

one thing I've noticed; playing Schaeffer back on hi-fi equipment exaggerates it's limitations. try playing Schaeffer back on your computer's built-in speaker and it sounds fantastic again.

Yeah, I didn't get to meet him, but he's buds with Teitelbaum, who taught me at Bard. Doesn't Chadabe teach at Renssalear (sp?) too?

gawd, can't believe I misspelled Xenakis's name there; sorry, I was typing fast. Anyway, yeah the old Elektra/Nonesuch lp was "Bohor", "Orient-Occident", "Concrete Ph" and "Diamorphoses"; so you get all that plus a couple extra compositions on the cd.

I'll wait until 'HPSCHD' is released and then I'll put and order in.

http://www.cdemusic.org/store/cde_search.cfm?keywords=em1

good service?

http://www.cdemusic.org/catalogs/labels.html

And they still have a few of those BVHaast things, all recommended. Oh, I remember what else I bought from them, this great Feldman disc of Spring of Chosroes on CP2 that I was having a lot of trouble tracking down. They seem to be out of stuff from that label, though.

Yes, I very good, speedy service as I recall. Although, their prices are a bit high, it should be noted. But if you are having trouble finding the stuff...

ok I'll get onto it.

Also Xenakis' "Electronic Music" is a must have - Diamorphoses and Concret PH (burning coal embers never sounded so good!) are stellar.

Avoid = Herbert Brun's "Sawdust" - its extremely primitive in sound, and nearly verges on the monophonic at times. A chore to get through.

was a bit of a struggle to make it through any of his CD's actually. moments worth knowing about, but the discs are already all on the shelf.

Agree, I think they're beautiful and strangely moving. Plus Julio if you ever get the rest of the Schaeffer CDs you might like him more, personally I love his stuff tho less so when he tries too hard to be a "proper composer". I've got the Xenakis CD (got it in NYC!), 'tis essential of course!