Robert Hollis/Christopher Swartz ‘ISO’

01 Clockwork (4:02)
02 Since The Begining Of Time (5:16)
03 Shining (4:42)
04 Faith And Reason (2:27)
05 Pedestrian (5:00)
06 The Greeting (5:00)
07 Crosstalk (3:48)
08 Lagoon (4:52)
09 Riot (3:25)
10 Out Of The Fog (3:54)

Total time 42:15
LP released by Perimeter Records, P-001, Atlanta, GA, 1986

Perimeter Records was founded by Chris Swartz and Robert Hollis in 1986. Between 1987-1993, they released annual free promotional Christmas cassettes documenting the Atlanta underground scene, as well as compilations like the 1987 ‘Nine Underground’ LP, the latter including Swans’ singer Jarboe. Most of the material published by Perimeter was apparently recorded by Doug Hughes’ Solar Wind studio in Atlanta. The duo of Chris Swartz and Robert Hollis released 3 full-length LPs in the 1980s (see discography below). Both men were trained drummers and were known locally as instrument builders. Swartz designed the instruments, some made out of PVC, like this WNYC show demonstrates with an excerpt from their 2nd LP (mp3 here, from46:45 on). Self-build instruments were probably more apparent on Music for Homebuilt Instruments, than on ISO, their first release. The latter is still infused by New Wave-y keyboards and 2-notes bass lines, though the duo cleverly stays clear from easy songwriting – vocals are recited/read, not sung, for instance. Most (but not all) percussion is played by Swartz, while synths are played by Hollis. The use of library and documentary recordings add depth to some compositions. The last 3 tracks particularly stand out on this album: #8 ‘Lagoon’ has soft and mysterious maracas and wind chimes on a background of waves breaking on a shore. #9 ‘Riot’ superposes drums, synth and demonstration recordings, not unlike Heiner Goebbel/Alfred Harth’s famous ‘Berlin, Q-Damm 12.4.81′. The last track, ‘Out of the Fog’, is a mystical conclusion with drums a la Ummagumma and long-held synth notes. Chris Swartz also played drums with King Kill 33, Pineal Ventana or Broken Symmetry, amongst others. I wish I could find a copy of Music for Homebuilt Instruments one day.

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Chris Swartz and Robert Hollis discography:

• ISO (LP), Perimeter Records, 1986
• Music for Homebuilt Instruments (LP), Perimeter Records, date?
• 11 x 2 (LP), Perimeter Records, date?

Rimarimba ‘Chicago Death Excretion Geometry’

01 Chicago Death (22:45)
02 Excretion Geometry (22:52)

Total time 45:39
Cassette released by Unlikely Records, UK, 1986

‘Chicago Death Excretion Geometry’, recorded 1986, was to be Rimarimba’s last album, initially published on Unlikely Records, then reissued as an Hamster LP (HAM 20) in 1987. On the cover of ‘In The Woods’, the 2nd Rimarimba LP (1985), the term ’systems music’ is acknowledged as included in their catalog, Robert Cox probably referring here to The Dead Goldfish Ensemble and his own Rimarimba. Indeed, the kind of symmetric synth patterns that forms the epic tracks on CDEG are grounded in the British take on American Minimalism known as Systems Music and such composers as Andrew Poppy. Both Carl Howard (LP review in Zamizdat Trade Journal #5, USA, 1987) and Alan Freeman (Audion Magazine review, UK, 1987) noted the initial letters of the title form the basic chords for the compositions. Track #1 Chicago Death goes on for 11:20 mns on a C chord (Chicago), before morphing into a D chord for the remainder of the track (Death). While superficially repetitive, tracks are actually build on multiple sequences in elegant counterpoint, gently and relentlessly morphing into the next. Thus, through limited tone range and exquisite synth programming, Cox constructs enchanting, endlessly spiraling melodies. Easy listening that retains some mysteries, with electronic sounds sourced from DX7 and Casio CZ 101 preset sounds and the use of a Yamaha CX5 sequencer.

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See also:
Rimarimba ‘In The Woods’ >
Rimarimba ‘Below the horizon’ >

L.G. Mair, Jr. ‘Music For Winefride’

01 Winefride IX (5:21)
02 Winefride’s Prayer (5:20)
03 Winefride XIV (5:48)
04 Winefride XV (6:12)
05 Winefride XVI (6:09)
06 Winefride VIII (5:24)
07 Cadfael (4:23)
08 Winefride VI (5:23)

Total time 44:00
Cassette released by Irre-Tapes, Germany, 1993

L.G. Mair, Jr. was the bass player in US space-rock band Alien Planetscapes between 1987-1992. Alien Planetscapes was founded by Doug Walker in Queens, NY during the 1970s and involved many people through different lineups, including Carl Howard (from No Music/Audiofile Tapes), Al Margolis (If, Bawana/Sound of Pig) or David Prescott (from Generations Unlimited), among many others. American tape label Harsh Reality offers 2 lengthy tracks from an Alien Planetscapes 2001 radio session where L.G. Mair, Jr. plays bass (mp3 1 and 2). ‘Music For Winefride’ was Mair’s 2nd solo cassette release and he was also contributing to various compilation tapes worldwide, including other tracks in the Winefride series. His solo music is exclusively based on Roland MC50 sequencer and Ensoniq VFX synthesizer, popular electronic instruments of the time. Track titles on ‘Music For Winefride’ are apparently inspired by Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael mystery books series, published 1977-94, so that this collection of electronic tracks can be heard as incidental music to a historical murder mystery. The compositions are fairly repetitive instrumentals with clever drumbox and synth programming, and a keen ear for electronic arrangements. In the same league as British acts The Dead Goldfish Ensemble, The Same or Rimarimba.

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L.G. Mair, Jr. cassettography:
1992 Feuerball/Aradia, Ebus Music, Germany
1993 Music For Winefride, Irre-Tapes, Germany
1994 Sacrament, Ha-Releases, The Netherlands
1997 Sounds From Micro Lounge, HalTapes, USA

Cortex ‘Souvenir/souvenirs’

01 Cortex E (1:58)
02 Cortex F (1:13)
03 Cortex G (2:17)
04 Cortex H (2:06)
05 Cortex I (3:26)
06 Cortex J (1:34)
07 Cortex K (0:38)
08 Cortex L (4:37)
09 Cortex M (2:21)
10 Cortex N (1:35)
11 [unidentified] (1:03)
12 Cortex O (23:40)

Vocals:
Isabelle Y. (#E, G, I, J, N)
Mirella B. (#F, M, O)
Nadine B. (#H, K)
Tina S. (#L)

Total time 46:10
Recorded 1978 -1982
Cassette released by Insane Music, Trazegnies, Belgium, 1984

Cortex was Alain Neffe’s musical project before he started Bene Gesserit in 1982, his duo with partner Nadine Bal aka Benedict G. In 1981-82, the latter was then manager for Belgian New Wave band Digital Dance. Cortex was active between 1978 and 1982, their music focusing on electronic ambient tonalities and female poetry reading (in French), with tracks merely numbered by their respective letters – so presumably the entire Cortex output amounts to 26 tracks. Cortex A, B and C appeared on Insane Music For Insane People #01, 1981. Other tracks appeared on other compilations on Insane or elsewhere. ‘Souvenir/souvenirs’ is probably Cortex’s only full length release. The Belgian label Grafika Airlines published this tape as a joint release with Insane Music in 1984. My copy is the undated, Insane Music issue. Music-wise: The unsettling, metaphysical synth washes make one feel uneasy with their menacing tonalities, not unlike the 1972 Solaris soundtrack by Edward Artemiev. The readers are very young women just out of teenagehood. Their poetry deals with day-to-day concerns of late night cafés, neon lights, jukeboxes, the difficulty to find one’s place in society, lost love and lack thereof.

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Various ‘Eh bien, la Norvège…’

Sigurd Berge (1)
01 Månelandskap 2:55
02 Munnharpe 2:04
03 Humoresque 3:38
04 Eg beisla min støvel 2:37
Bjørn Fongaard (1)
05  The Space Concerto 14:15
Alf Hurum (2)
‘Three Aquarelles for piano’
06 The Water Lilly 3:52
07 Miniature 1:26
08 Aquarelle 1:28
Arne Nordheim (1)
09 Fem Osaka-biter – a 4:27
10 Fem Osaka-biter – b 3:33
11 Fem Osaka-biter – c 3:43
12 Fem Osaka-biter – d 3:21
13 Fem Osaka-biter – e 3:14
Geir Jenssen (4)
14 ‘Shhoctavoski’ 14:30
Jøran Rudi & John Persen (3)
15 ‘Untitled 1′ 7:56
Sto (5)
16 ‘Spiegelei (åmmage)’ 6:41

SOURCES:
(1) Contemporary Music from Norway, LP, Philips 6507 034 (1973) [+]
(2) Contemporary Music from Norway, LP, Philips 6507 004 (1971)
(3) Things Take Time, LP, Norwegian Composers label, ref NC4930 (1987)
(4) Personal live recording, 2009
(5) Unreleased, 2009

Total time 80mn
Track selection by sto, 2009

This compilation was specially selected for and offered to the readers of this blog by ’sto’ (born 1965), a reader from Bergen, Norway, himself a scientist, photographer [+] and clarinet player. The selection includes some of our reader’s favorite electroacoustic and contemporary music tracks from Norwegian composers and can work as a fine introduction to this country’s avantgarde music output. He added some of his own photos and gave the whole package a facetious French title: ‘Eh bien, la Norvège…’, before sending it to my home. As sto is a vinyl aficonado, tracks were culled from various vinyls, including two rare Philips LPs from the 1970s, but also from personal recordings. Things start with powerful, monophonic electronic tonalities by Sigurd Berge (1929-2002), whose 4 tracks are build on long, fascinating sounds from vintage synth circa 1971, possibly an EMS Synthi AKS (see bio here). Bjørn Fongaard (1919-1980) was a microtonal composer and guitarist (see bio here) whose most famous piece is arguably ‘Galaxy’, 1965, for 3 self-build guitars in special tunings, featured on another Philips LP on their Prospective 21e Siècle series titled ‘Musique Electronique Norvégienne’ (read Lasse Marhaug’s enthusiast comments on the piece here). The Space Concerto, for piano and tape, is another great piece by Fongaard, a dialogue between atmospheric piano chords and gorgeous, pre-recorded electroacoustic sounds apparently entirely sourced from microtonal guitar. Alf Hurum (1882-1972) was a conductor in Bergen before relocating to Honolulu in 1924 (nice photo here). He ceased composing in 1930 to indulge into silk painting. ‘Three aquarelles’, published 1912, are short piano compositions inspired by French impressionism, particularly Debussy. Fem Osaka-biter (Five Osaka Fragments) is a musique concrète sound installation by Arne Nordheim (b.1931) which ran for 6 months during the Osaka World Fair in Japan, 1971 (where Stockhausen famously presented his entire work during a 51-hours performance in the much publicized spherical auditorium). The composition uses 6 continuously running cassettes of various lengths and contents: electronic sounds, field recordings, orchestra rehearsal, conversations, radio transmissions, etc. The vast yet aleatory sound collage of modern life thus created reminds of Walter Ruttmann’s Weekend and Edgar Varèse’s Electronic Poem, no less – though with Nordheim’s specific, atmospheric style. Next is ambient Shostakovich by Geir Jenssen aka Biosphere (b.1962). The latter was commissionned an orchestral score for the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and created it from Shostakovich samples and an electronic notation program. Critics were left unconvinced: ‘Sjostakovitsj-biter’, says this Norwegian article (or Shostakovich Fragments). This unreleased recording works fine as atmospheric orchestral music with its never ending crescendos. Jøran Rudi (b.1954) started recording electroacoustic music in 1986 (see bio here), teaming up with John Persen at the time. On the latter’s official website, the piece is titled 7′56”, its actual duration, and using: Roland Jupiter 6 and Korg synths plus TR 808 rhythm box. Through tape manipulation and sound effects, the composers constantly alter pitch and height, creating striking surreal effects. Sto himself contributes a collage piece from a live performance of the Bergen University Symphony Orchestra, including intermission audience noises, conversations, the orchestra tuning and various moments when you’re not sure the music has started. In this exquisite piece, non-music arises from musical samples.

A big THANK YOU to sto for the fantastic music!

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David Keane ‘Lyra’

1. Lyra (11:41)
   Monica Gaylord: piano
2. Elegy (9:03)
   Joel Quarrington: double bass
3. Evening Song (6:36)
   Karen Skidmore: soprano
4. In Memoriam: Hugh LeCaine (16:29)

Total time 43:49
LP released by Music Gallery, MGE-29, Toronto, Canada, 1979

I came to worship any Toronto’s Music Gallery releases, admittedly treasuring them like nothing else in my LP collection, and this one is no exception. David Keane is a Canadian electroacoustic composer born in the US in 1943. He founded the Queen’s University Electroacoustic Music Studios, Kingston, Ontario, in 1970. Educated as a bass player in the 1960s, Keane started electroacoustic music experiments in 1963 with an interest for acoustic vs electronic dialogue and a typically focused composing style. ‘Lyra’ is his first published disc – followed by ‘Aurora’ on Barry Truax’s own Cambridge Records in 1985. The title track, for piano and electronic, is a restrained study in piano extended technique and electronic counterpoint. With the use of one string only and various playing techniques, Monica Gaylord creates a steady rhythm and sonic variations while the electronics add depth and danger with their repetitive, bass sequences. As if piano and electronics have always been meant to play together. The following tracks succeed to maintain the same level of intricacy between bass or voice and electronic treatments. The last one, dedicated to Canadian composer LeCaine, is for electronic sounds and tape. It shows Keane’s great skills in creating arresting electronic sounds and combining them in a structured, entertaining piece. David Keane wrote ‘Electroacoustic Music in Canada’ in 2000 [+], a well researched article where he pays his dues to LeCaine.

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Leo Küpper ‘Kouros et Korê/Innominé’

1. Kouros et Korê, 1979 (23:40)
   Jeannette Inchauste: phonemes
   Jean-Claude Frison: phonemes
2. Innominé, 1974 (21:17)
   Allessandra Mihail: voice
   Foreign students from Brussels Free University: vocals

Total time 45:00
LP released by Igloo, Belgium, 1981

Belgian composer Leo Küpper (b.1935) started to experiment with electronic music in 1959 as a student at Liège University, Belgium, using two Brüel & Kjaer oscillators and a tape recorder. From 1961, while studying musicology in Brussels, he worked at Brussels Apelac electronic music studio, founded by Henri Pousseur in 1959. Küpper founded his own ‘Studio de Recherches et de Structurations Electroniques Auditives’ in Brussels in 1967. He created interactive sound installations he called ‘Public Computer Music’ (Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Roma, 1977) and various electronic instruments like the ‘Automates Sonores’, the Kinephone in 1987, or the ‘Ordinateur Musical’, a voice-activated computer with electronic sounds interacting with the audience. These interactive musical events sometimes took place in Sound Domes (1977-1987), architectural structures with up to 100 speakers, like in Linz, Austria, 1984. Küpper was always fascinated with the human voice and some of his best works use it as source material. He researched the world of phonemes and glossolalia, or speaking in tongues in Christian and Orthodox liturgy. He founded the Phonemic and Vocal group in 1982, with singers using the musical machines described above. One of his compositions of 1974 is based on Antonin Artaud’s poem ‘L’enclume des Forces’. He often worked with actors and students, more rarely with professional singers (like mezzo-soprano A.M. Kieffer), in which case his music is comparable to Luciano Berio’s compositions for Cathy Berberian. In 1973, Küpper traveled to Iran to study santur with Hossein Malek. Since then, he has been a noted santur player, performing abroad during festivals and composing for santur and electronics.

‘Kouros et Korê’ (1979) is constructed from the extraordinary performances of dancer Jeannette Inchauste and actor Jean-Claude Frison, whose ability to produce a wide array of microscopic vocal sounds is used by Küpper to build a delicate, complex architecture of intertwined phonemes. The latter include such sub-categories as (in French): allophones, phonatomes, logatomes and phonetic micro-sounds. The close-up miking goes inside the sub-atomic structure of sound, while the studio montage organizes the phonetic sounds into a fascinating voicescape. No surprise sound poet Henri Chopin found the piece beautiful when Küpper played it to him in the 1980s (from a 2009 interview). Retrospectively, the works of Anna Homler, David Moss or Phil Minton seem to be inspired by these experiments.

‘Innominé’ (1974) uses the ‘Ordinateur Musical’ to process the utterances of a group of students. At the beginning, the program reacts with semi-aleatoric electronic sounds to the inchoate, indistinct ushed vocals. Then the seductive voice of Allessandra Mihail expresses the interrogations of an isolated individual. A fascinating electronic passage of dignified computer interjections follows at 6:00. Vocals return on 17:00, when all the students proposes new words and phonetic sounds according to their mother tongue (Chinese, Arab, Danish, French) during a collective performance using the interactive computer’s electronic treatment. In the end, the beauty of ‘Innominé’ impresses more than the technology used, which is indicative of its musical accomplishment.

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Discography:
1971 ‘L’Enclume Des Forces/Électro-Poème/Automatismes Sonores‘, LP, Deutsche Grammophon
1981 ‘Kouros et Korê/Innominé’, LP, Igloo 007
1985 ‘Amkéa/Aérosons’, LP, Igloo 032
199? ‘Litanea’, CD, Harmonia Mundi CM 2023
1996 ‘Electro-Acoustic’, CD, Pogus 21009-2
1999 ‘Ways of the Voice’, CD, Pogus 21018-2
2003 ‘Complete Electronic Works 1961-74′, CD, Sub Rosa

Appears on:
1991 ‘Cimbalom World Congress’, CD, Hungaroton HCD 18209

Various ‘Inventionen II’

01 Takehito Shimazu Zytoplasma (10:55)
02 Boguslaw Schaeffer Maa’ts (9:55)
03 Rolf Enström Fractal (22:22)

Total time 43:12
LP released on Edition RZ, 1985

Take a look at Berlin’s 1984 Inventionen Festival’s program and you realise how consistent the choices of organizer Robert Zank were: NY sound artist Yoshi(masa) Wada; Montreal’s electro-acoustic improvising group Sondes; François Bayle and Bernard Parmegiani from INA-GRM; composers from South America and Sweden. The works on this LP were showcased and sometimes premiered during the Festival’s 2nd edition, hence the ‘Inventionen II’ title. Takehito Shimazu (b.1949) is a Japanese electronic and computer music composer whose works have been well received in Europe. His track ‘Zytoplasma’ is build on a constant electronic drone, growing in pitch and intensity for the first 7 minutes. It will be the basis to a rigid grid of electronic bleeps and buzzes, an evocation of a primary soup growing in intensity and diversity, starting with simple sound cells morphing into more complex sonic organisms (white noise, sort of). Thanks to its fine synthetic sounds, varied textures and un-hurried pace, the piece is a joy to listen to. Boguslaw Schaefer was featured on vol. I already – please refer to previous post for info. Composed at Stockholm’s EMS studios by Swedish Rolf Enström (b.1951), ‘Fractal’ was premiered at Inventionen ‘84. It is an ambitious electroacoustic composition based on processed sounds from classical instruments as well as synth and computer parts. The inspiration apparently comes from processed photos. The music is purely electroacoustic with great care to timbre: sounds are included for their timbral properties, mostly like musical objects under the scrutiny of the composer. To no surprise for an Edition RZ LP, sound quality is very good, appropriately for this kind of music. Is this reason enough not to reissue it on CD? – I wonder.

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