Audio Arm #3 ‘Omniana’

A founding member of San Francisco’s infamous art-punk band The Mutants, John Gullak (b. 1953, pictured above) was first a painter with several exhibitions in Bay Area galleries during the 1970s. He founded Another Room Magazine in 1978 with Lucy Childs and graphic designer Michael Mallery [+], apparently one of the first magazines designed using a MacIntosh computer. Another Room was a zine devoted to SF’s underground culture and arts to which Greil Marcus, amongst others, was a contributor. In 1982, the editors also organized Public Hearing events, during which they mixed various cassettes on a PA system installed on the roof of a building in an industrial area in Oakland, CA. Gullak co-founded A.R.P.H. Tapes (for Another Room Public Hearings) in 1982 with Jeff Brogan, and released a dozen of compilation cassettes and solo works from a network of (principally Bay Area) contributors, including XX Committee, Big City Orchestra, Johanna Went, or The Problemist aka Unsound magazine publisher William Davenport – the Gullak portrait on top of this post comes from Unsound vol.1 #5, published 1984, available on Notes From Underground blog. John Gullak is also the No Other Radio show original founder on KPFA FM, Berkeley, CA.

The majority of bands on Omniana, the companion cassette to Another Room Magazine #3, published 1985, come from the Bay Area, with the exception of Architects Office, Controlled Bleeding, Maybe Mental and Joseph Nechvatal. The compilation actually documents San Francisco’s local fringes and arty scene, focusing on the ambient experimental side. Contributions are highly consistent throughout with a strong emphasis on using electronics as an equivalent to mental disorder and social alienation, as if a soundtrack to a Philip K. Dick novel. In this respect, highlights are the unsettling contributions from Maybe Mental, Barrydalive and Ambrosia Transpersonal Communications. The latter is the duo of trance and shamanic performance artist Kristine Ambrosia (picture above from Leonardo Music Journal, vol.24, No. 2, 1991) and Timothy O’Neill on music and visuals. Their infamous live performances blended SM, occult and avantgarde elements, and their ‘Spinning Sigil’ is indeed from a live performance, contrary to most contributors resorting to hometaping, with the exception of National Disgrace aka Fred Rinne [+] whose track is also from a live recording. Also included are backward running synth drones by Steve Fisk, and collage and found sounds on Mashinenraum, START and Joseph Nechvatal. Barrydalive aka Barry Ward is close to musique concrète on his wonderful ‘Phallus in Wonderland’. Excellent cassette. Thanks to reader Spirito Bono for track titles. Audio Arm #2 was posted here.

Audio Arm #3 ‘Omniana’:

01 Architects Office ‘AO 254-4 part 1′ (2:10)
02 Black Iron Prison ‘World 96 Dream’ (3:29)
03 Die Walpurgisnacht ‘Liebestod’ (4:13)
04 Mashinenraum ‘New Primitive’ (3:32)
05 Maybe Mental ‘Calling’ (6:52)
06 Controlled Bleeding ‘Hurl’ (4:36)
07 Steve Fisk ‘No Basket Ball Lying in Texas (edit from)’ (4:35)
08 START ‘Tell Me of War’ (4:31)
09 National Disgrace ‘Creation of the World’ (2:57)
10 Deviation Social ‘She Wants To Be Near Manson’ (2:55)
11 Barrydalive ‘Phallus in Wonderland’ (6:03)
12 Joseph Nechvatal ‘There Must Be a Higher Meaning’ (3:25)
13 All Congo Ju Ju Band ‘Piece of Fat’ (2:56)
14 German Shepherds ‘Love Me’ (3:12)
15 Brad Laner ‘For Master’ (3:36)
16 Ambrosia Transpersonal Communications ‘Spinning Sigil’ (7:06)
17 Architects Office ‘AO 254-4 part 2′ (2:29)

Total time 68:30
Cassette released with Another Room Magazine #3, ARPH Tapes, AT#017, San Francisco, USA, 1985

Download [new link w/ updated track names]

Bonnie Kane

Pierre Barbaud/Akira Tamba

During the 1950s, French composer Pierre Barbaud (1911-1990) composed many film soundtracks, including Alain Resnais’ Le Chant du Styrène in 1958, and Chris Marker’s films Un Dimanche à Pékin, 1957, and Lettre de Sibérie, 1958. Coincidentally, he was researching algorithmic and computer-assisted music, where the computer would process the entire composition in terms of pitch, duration and intervals, in a technique similar to Lejaren Hiller in the US. Barbaud was then (1958) a member of the Groupe de Musique Algorithmique de Paris (GMAP) along Georges Charbonnier and wife Janine. From 1959 to 1975, Barbaud worked for the Honeywell Bull company in Paris and had access to large calculators able to fulfill the lengthy electronic processing required by his projects. Hand-crafted punch cards were used to feed data into the mainframe (large cabinet housing the processor), which eventually delivered digits forming the basis of the composition. For this task, Barbaud used an early version of FORTRAN, IBM’s Formula Translating programming language. Some of Pierre Barbaud’s music uses synthetic sounds (like this excerpt from Saturnia Tellus, 1980, used on the official website’s homepage), yet he also applied his concept to chamber ensemble and orchestra, as the present record demonstrates.

In French Gagaku, for string ensemble, composed 1968, Barbaud applied his cybernetic technique to the entire orchestra. The score was orchestrated with the help of a Honeywell Bull calculator, instructed to derive the music  from a variety of mathematical parameters. So this microtonal work is not programmed like with a computer today, rather the calculator computed each parts in the narrow limits allowed by Barbaud. Pitch is fixed, but height, length and intervals vary, resulting in a myriad of elaborated microtones from the strings. No development, no beginning nor end, rather like a sound installation, the elegant music of French Gagaku certainly evokes court music like the title implies. In case you’d want to give it a listen before downloading it, fellow blogger Acousmata offers a sound file and an analyis of French Gagaku on his own blog. The refinement is even greater in Mu Joken, composed 1970, for a small ensemble of 8 instruments including piano, flute, acoustic guitar, trumpet and cello, with notes subtly distributed among the interprets, like in a Klangfarbenmelodie. Fascinating music.

Japanese composer Akira Tamba, (Yokohama, 1932) moved to France in 1960 to study with Olivier Messiaen at the Conservatoire de Paris. There he became a noted musicologist and wrote several books on Japanese traditional music and Nô theater. As a composer, his style blends French clarity with Japanese intricacy and dramatization. The first piece included on this LP, Tathatà, for string quartet and onomatopœia, belongs to the composer’s early works from the 1960s. It brings Nô’s monosyllabic utterings into a post-Webernian string quartet, exploring minute microtonality from the string instruments. In Complexe Simple, eerie glissandos, similar to Toru Takemitsu’s film music of the 1960s, create disturbing soundscapes. The science fiction movie atmosphere is increased by the inclusion of Ondes Martenot near the 8:50 mark. On a side note, in a previous post I published a live recording of Tamba’s Accalmies, for 6 Ondes Martenot, composed 1978.

Pierre BARBAUD
01 French Gagaku (14:05)
02 Mu Joken (8:58)
Akira TAMBA
03 Tathatà (13:44)
04 Complexe Simple (11:15)

Total time 48:00
LP released by Barclay/Inedits RTF, France, 1971

Download

Martin Fischer/Schwarzenlander ‘Warum sollte ich wohl? Ein Elektroakustisches Manifest Gegen Die Phallokratie’

Martin Fischer-Schwarzenlander is an Austrian composer, born 1955, Seewalchen, Austria. He studied double-bass and composition in Salzburg and Essen in the 1970s, where he was already composing electroacoustic and electronic music. He was the editor of ‘KompAkt 23, Wiener Zeitschrift für neue musik’, a Vienna music journal. In 1987, he married feminist writer and journalist Erica Fischer and took her surname as a composer – they were apparently married for only one year. Schwarzenlander’s last known composition is Pas Rien, recorded at INA-GRM studios, Paris, 1988. Since this date, Schwarzenlander ceased composing, putting an end to a 10-year career.

Warum sollte ich wohl? was recorded in the studios of G.M.E.B. in Bourges, France, 1987. Like the two other works included in this LP, the piece is based on readings of quotations and excerpts from literature or newspapers (Brecht, Schopenhauer, Peter Handke, Nazi officials, a French nuclear plant’s technical blurb). Texts are read by male and female voices alternatively, with various sound treatments creating a kaleidoscopic tapestry of vocies. The music matches the variety of vocals with an assortment of synthesizer, found sounds, sound collage and studio treatments, all conducted by Fischer in his peculiar way, as he did not allow the professional studio equipment influence his music. The idiosincrasy and uniqueness is only comparable (though not similar to) that of Steve Moore or Roger Doyle, for instance. Nicht ein Wassertropfen (Not a drop of water is missing from the sea) and Das Unrecht in meinem Bad (Injustice in my tub) were recorded at Institut für Psychoakustik und Elektronische Musik, Gent, 1984 and 1980, respectively.

Warum sollte ich wohl?
Ein Elektroakustisches Manifest Gegen Die Phallokratie

1. Warum sollte ich wohl? (21:35)
   Erica Fischer, Miriam Ender, Martin Fischer: voices
2. Nicht ein Wassertropfen fehlt dem Meer (13:32)
   Edith Hollenstein: voice
3. Das Unrecht in meinem Bad (11:12)
   Georg Batik, Arno Fischbacher: voices

Total time 46:19
LP released by Arcana, Wien, Austria, 1987

Download

Erik Satie ‘7 Tableaux Phoniques’

On ‘7 Tableaux Phoniques’, British improvisers usually associated with French label Nato offers a refreshing take on Erik Satie’s music, free from the cliches usually associated with it. Their multi-faceted approach is indeed more exciting than truckloads of mellow piano music currently flooding the Satie market. The Tableaux Phoniques (Phonic Canvases) of the title  allude to Satie’s 3rd Furniture Music composition, titled Phonic Tiles (Carrelage Phonique).

Alan Hacker contributes a succession of 3 tracks, each focusing on one aspect of Satie. The first is an Ancient Greek melody, famous for its inclusion on the influential 1978 ‘Musique de la Grèce Antique’ LP by Gregorio Paniagua’s Atrium Musicae de Madrid (see video below). It’s sublime melody is beautifully interpreted here by Hacker on solo flute. His second track is a joyous Cabaret number in homage to Satie’s tenure at Le Chat Noir and other Parisian cabarets. His third offering is a British gamelan orchestra, as Satie, like Debussy, was fascinated by the gamelan instruments and music exhibited at the 1889 Paris World Fair, the actual birth of Ambient Music, according to David Toop.

Steve Beresford’s sparse piano improvisation is closer to Eno’s Discreet Music than Satie, but is a welcomed suggestion. Philip Wachsmann also contributes a solo track, on violin+electroacoustic tape. Other idiosyncratic tracks include Lol Coxhill jamming with a Japanese rock band and Dave Holland with a heart-breaking waltz. Generally speaking, in lieu of interpreting a famous Satie tune, participants to this compilation have chosen to revive the spirit of Satie: nobility, timelessness, playfulness, grace, musical joke, etc. Extraordinary disc, that reignited my interest for Satie.

7 Tableaux Phoniques:

Alan Hacker
01 Premier Hymne Delphique (2:36)
02 Music Hall (2:10)
03 Terra Violata Interlude (excerpt) (1:13)
04 Steve Beresford ‘Budapest Subway’ (6:57)
05 Robert Cornford ‘Welcome’ (4:45)
David Holland
06 Moving Things From A To B (4:11)
07 Faltz Waltz (3:21)
08 Philip Wachsmann ‘For Mémoires Of An Amnesiac’ (5:30)
09 Tony Coe ‘Allair Mets’ (6:25)
10 Lol Coxhill ‘Faction De Satie’ (6:13)

Total time 43:15
LP released by Nato, France, 1993

Download

Various ‘The Best Of Tonspur Tapes’

A compilation of post-industrial bands from the 1980s might seam a bleak prospect, but this is something different. It’s a continuous mix of music lifted from Stefan Schwab’s Tonspur Tapes back catalogue. Tonspur was a German cassette label active from 1986 to 1995, releasing dozens of tapes by the usual suspects of the fringe experimental scene, like Big City Orchestra, The Dead Goldfish Ensemble, Brume, De Fabriek, Doc Wör Mirran, Das Synthetische Mischgewebe, David Prescott, The Haters, etc. The Best of Tonspur Tapes was issued on Tonspur’s parent label Echtzeit in 1989 and reissued by Hypertonia World Enterprise, Norway, in 1992. I assume the mix was done by Schwab himself, though he’s not credited as such on the cover. The mix favors atmospheric excerpts flowing effortlessly into each other to form two coherent, ambitious tracks, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A labor of love from Stefan Schwab and a pleasure to listen to.

Side A (28:57)
SSR 231
Merz
Brume
Merzbow
Abner Malaty
If, Bwana
M.A.D.
Cycles
Kapotte Muziek & Context
Alain Basso
Pacific 231

Side B (28:13)
Human Flesh
Conrad Schnitzler
Abner Malaty
Siegmar Fricke
Comando Bruno
Pacific 231
The Grey Wolves
Smersh
Big City Orchestra
Doc Wör Mirran
MGZ

Total time 57:10
Cassette released on Echtzeit, Germany, 1989

Download

The Glass Orchestra ‘Tales from Siliconesia’

Created  in 1977 by students of Toronto’s York University Music Department, The Glass Orchestra (hereafter: the Orchestra) benefited from favorable local factors in its rise to a leading, world-class performing act. The university’s music teachers included David Rosenboom and Richard Teitelbaum and was welcoming contemporary experiments and avantgarde composers – John Cage premiered his Lecture on the Weather at York in 1976 (in which Miguel Frasconi performed) and some future Orchestra members took part to a performance of David Tudor’s Rain Forest installation in 1975, when Tudor visited the university as a guest artist/lecturer. Some Orchestra members also studied with pianist and improvisation teacher Casey Sokol. Launched by Al Mattes and Peter Anson with generous government funding in 1976, the Music Gallery, then located on 30 St Patrick Street, held weekly concerts and various music festivals, ensuring regular gigs and emulation with local and visiting musicians. In 1980, the Glass Orchestra performed there regularly the first Wednesday of each month, and toured extensively across Asia, North America and Europe during the 1980s. Contrary to what I wrote in my first Orchestra post, they never studied with R. Murray Schafer, though, and their influences must be found elsewhere.

The core members of the classic Orchestra were Marvin Green (b Toronto 1956), who was then running the Music Gallery Editions of live recordings and LP releases, and half of the Pitch duo with John Oswald, 1976-1982 ; Eric Cadesky (b Toronto 1956), who created many of the Orchestra’s glass instruments ; Paul Hodge (b Toronto 1957), the Gallery’s technical director ;  Miguel Frasconi (b New York City, 1956), composer and performer with the New Music Co-op, created 1970, and pianist with the Three Sided Room quartet, along Paul Hodge (clarinet, autoharp), John Oswald (saxophone) and Marvin Green (bass, voice). They performed at the Ear It Live festival, Toronto, 1980.

When the Music Gallery Editions had to cease publishing records, the Orchestra decided to create their own label and to launch things off with this exquisite single, released 1981. Text and music on both sides were totally spontaneous and recorded during longer improvisations in the Orchestra’s own rehearsal space at the time, an art deco building on 31 Mercer Street, coincidentally the ex-headquarters of the Pilkington Glass Company. Fred’s Fable definitely carries a feeling of exhilaration and contagious joy. The hilarious story-telling juxtaposes a nonsensical children’s tale with weird sounds from the glass instruments, including speaking in a bowl and a rhythm track played on water (1:40), presumably emulating a washing-machine! The music is both exotic, dreamy and funny, from a variety of glass percussion and flutes. Marvin Green is the lead vocalist on Fred’s Fable, though Eric Cadesky and Miguel Frasconi start things off with their own vocal interjections. That same year (1981) Frasconi played bowl gongs on Jon Hassel’s Dream Theory in Malaya, recorded in Hamilton, Ontario. On Malay, a recording of a ‘joy-filled water splash rhythm’ by Asian children, edited and looped by Paul Fitzgerald, is used as a rhythm track for almost the entire composition. The result is close to Fred’s Fable, though the Orchestra have a more communal sense of having fun. Note on the same Hassel LP Canadian composer Andrew Timar is credited with frog field recording – he appeared on several Musicworks cassettes as well.

The most striking feature on Verrillon 9, recorded during a public concert on Mercer Street, is the use of a long glass tube played by Marvin Green, its end placed in a glass bowl filled with water, as depicted on the cover. At first it sounds like a regular glass flute, but soon transmogrifies into a weird instrument when submerged in water, its eery sound contrasting with the pseudo-ethnic rhythm played on glass by Cadesky and Hodge, with bass by Frasconi. The frequent use of water in the Glass Orchestra is possibly derived from some John Cage’s composition like Water Music, 1952, for various objects and water containers, a piece Miguel Frasconi frequently performed himself around 1981. During the 1952 premiere, David Tudor poured water from various pots into others, in addition to playing the piano and radio. Another Cage composition using water is Inlets, 1977, for 3 gurgling consh-shells filled with water. In an interview published in Musicworks journal, issue #17, 1981, Miguel Frasconi asks John Cage about his Water Music and also tries to have Cage’s opinion about glass music. Frasconi:  ‘John Higgins once told me he was in a class of yours at Welseyan University and there was some sort of exhibit there of glass sculpture. And one day you took the class over there and asked them to make sounds with the sculptures. Have you ever made a piece using glass? – No, I never did’, Cage replies.

Thanks to Eric Cadesky and Miguel Frasconi for permission and invaluable information.

The Glass Orchestra ‘Tales from Siliconesia’:
01 Fred’s Fable (4:44)
02 Verrillon 9 (6:50)

Total time 11:34
7” single released by The Glass Orchestra, GO01 EP, Canada, 1981

Download

PBK ‘Macrophage/The Toil and The Reap’

When considering American independent electroacoustic music (as opposed to composers working in university studios), we generally spot strong individualities like Kim Cascone, John Hudak, Minoy, John Wiggins, Philip Perkins, etc (Tellus cassettes #13 Power Electronics, 1986 and #20 Media Myth, 1988, are a valid introduction), though it would make sense to consider the trend as a movement, like German Elektronische Musik or French Musique Concrète. Philip B. Klinger (b 1960, Michigan) has been a prominent figure of that scene since 1987, releasing many solo and collaborative tapes on various US underground labels. At first belonging to the nebulous US noise underground, his style had moved to distinct electroacoustic endeavors at the time of his first CD release, ‘Macrophage/The Toil and The Reap’ on Daniel Plunkett’s N D label. The disc pairs two electronic suites, the noise ambient Macrophage and the nuanced and restrained The Toil and The Reap. The opener ‘Forge’ aludes to Wagner in both title and content, as it could pass for an updated soundtrack to Siegfried’s scene where the dwarf is forging a blade in a cave. Macrophage can be heard as an homage to Richard Wagner, the creator of noise music, though PBK put his PBKSound archive under the tutelar figure of Luigi Russolo. The Toil and The Reap explores dreamy, cinematographic territories with subtle combinations of inscrutable electronic and musique concrète sounds, synth loops and sound effects. The free-floating, amoebic music of track #10 ‘Beckoning’ is a collaboration with Dirk Serries’ Vidna Obmana. N D also released another PBK CD ‘Shadows Of Prophecy/In His Throes’ in 1994.
More info on soundgenetic.blogspot.com/. Thanks to Philip for permission.

Macrophage
01 Forge (6:06)
02 Enmesh (4:26)
03 Cell Wall Defect (3:45)
04 Fusion (5:41)
05 Onset (3:27)
06 Aftermath (3:49)
The Toil and The Reap
07 Anger and Real Force (5:21)
08 Till The Stone Spells A Name (7:45)
09 Eyelids Closed, As In A Dream (9:17)
10 Beckoning (5:50)
11 Poison Sweets Of Love (6:24)

Total time 61:49
CD released by N D , Austin, TX, USA, 1992

Download

Jack Tamul ‘Electro/Acoustic’

US composer Jack Tamul, born 1948, Providence, Rhode Island, studied classical music composition in the 1960s before moving to electronic and computer music in the early 1970s, first in Jacksonville Univ., Florida, then in Finland under Einojuhani Rautavaara and at the Finnish Radio Electronic Music studios. From then on he composed electronic music for radio or TV broadcasts, film soundtracks, as well as incidental music for museums and planetariums of the Southeast. Working from a recording studio in Jacksonville, Tamul was able to pursue his research in acoustic vs electronic music, writing a Symphony for orchestra and synthesizer, for instance, and computer-assisted, multimedia projects for dance or poetry settings of William R. Strickland’s writings. Lately, he teamed up with James T. Miller to release 2 CDs about the Everglades, featuring baritone singer, chorus, electronics and field recordings of natural sounds. In 1979, Spectrum Records released William Strickland’s An Electronic Visit to the Zoo and Sound Hypnosis (posted on Lunar Atrium). Gershon Kingsley and Philip Springer contributed synthesizer arrangements to another Strickland disc, ‘William R. Strickland Is Only the Name’ LP [date?].

Electro/Acoustic consists of a succession of powerful tracks build from dense layers of sustained, electronic sounds, with occasional addition of a chorus. The uneasy, even menacing electronic sounds recall The Hafler Trio or Lustmord, while, on the first 2 tracks, the addition of a chorus brings the music closer to Ligeti’s vocal music (Rautavaara also wrote a lot of choral music), the pre-recorded Florida Junior College chorus parts being submitted to radical sound processing and studio effects. All compositions are rather imposing in their style and impressive in the ability with which Jack Tamul mixes massive drones, endless loops and rich keyboard sounds from his Prophet V, Arp 2600 and Moog synths. Some of this music is clearly ahead of its time.

Jack Tamul Electro/Acoustic:

01 Genesis (6:33)
02 Lament for Gettysburg (8:10)
03 Canon Cancrizans (5:05)
04 Fantasia (6:32)
05 Mogul (6:55)
06 Wave Rhapsody (6:30)

Total time 40mns
LP released by Spectrum Records, USA, 1980

Download

Jack Tamul’s discography (tbc):

• ‘Electro/Acoustic’ LP, Spectrum Records, 1980
• ‘CURA’ CD, JTM Studios, 1997
• w/ James T .Miller ‘Pahayokee: A Plea for Life’, CD, 2007
• w/ James T .Miller  ‘Voices of Everglades National Park’, CD, 2007