Electronic / Experimental

Futoshi Moriyama is an Osaka-based electronic music producer who began his musical career in the early 2000s improvised music hothouse of Osaka’s Shinsekai Bridge, an important venue for the “Kansai zero sedai” (Kansai Zero Generation), which sprang up in the wake of The Boredoms’ world-wide success. Kazuhisa Uchihashi was the axis of this Bridge scene; his workshops allowed a generation the freedom to develop their own voices. Moriyama’s early improvisational work often saw him using cheap samplers to surprising ends, but since then his work has moved in a more composed direction, while still investigating electronic sound. This particular release, which appeared initially in 2015 as a cassette on the Birdfriend label, run by Koshiro Hino (aka YPY), was a year in the making. All of the music was composed with software instruments, spurred by a desire to move beyond his previous work, and can be heard as a home-recorded orchestral music.

He made his debut at the age of 17 on Vanity Records. He is also a member of Tristan Disco, a no-wave dub obscure unit. A pioneer in the world of Japanese techno, Takayuki Shiraishi compiled a compilation of his rare recordings under the name MLD between 1983 and 1986. This is a piece that confirms Shiraishi's unique and offbeat style that crosses over from post-punk to dub to industrial. This is a must-have for fans of Mannequin Records and Minimal Wave. Mastered by the French genius Krikor Kouchian, limited to 500 copies.

He is known for his collaborations with big names such as Ry Cooder, Vampire Weekend and Moses Sumney, and as the leader of the jazz trio "Inga", Sam Gendel is a very popular fourth-world inspired saxophonist from LA who has created a unique and free sound that can be described as psychedelic, outsider or meditative. His latest album "Fresh Bread" from Leaving, which is arguably the most important album of the year, is now in stock. It's an all-genre anthology of 52 tracks selected from his personal archive of home recordings and performances from 2012 to 2020. Carlos Niño, Jamire Williams and others also participate.

The Tokyo-based Japanese experimental musician Masaya Nakahara as kwon as Violent Onsen Geisha has been dazzling us with his entirely singular approach to sound since 1989. Harnessing his unique natural approach to mixier by combining techno, pop samples and hip hop, as well as his sister's karaoke singing or his parent quarreling, screams and glass or ceramic bowls broken, he incredibly built a body of work in recorded contexts that has almost no parallel, producing arrangements where all the style and the sonic atmosphere meet in a happy junk room and elaborating his delirious patchwork studio from magneto-phone tapes. His amazing cut-up proved interesting to major band such as Sonic Youth and Beck, who invited him on a US tour in 1995. At the height of his music career as Violent Onsen Geisha in 1998, Nakahara published Mari & Fifi No Gyakusatsu Songu Bukku (Mari & Fifi’s Massacre Songbook) and made his debut as a novelist. In 2001, he received the 14th Yukio Mishima Award for “Arayuru Basho Ni Hanataba Ga” (Bouquets of Flowers Everywhere), and became increasingly active as a writer and movie critic. His best-know cassette Shock! Shock! Shock! released in 1989 from legendary Vanilla Records, first time reissued on vinyl format, takes us deep into the intimately responsive aspects of his work. Despite the density of its structures, that combine the most disparate musical genres with deafening shouts and crashes, Shock! Shock! Shock! feels like a breath of fresh air, fearlessly skirting the line between creative rigor and focused interplay and a playful irreverence in ways that leave you wondering where the hell you are. ‘’For someone who has no musical talent like me, the only thing that I could naturally create was noise.’’ Masaya Nakahara Vinyl with the magnificent mastering by Andrea Marutti is a truly thrilling exchange of collages, vacillating between kitsch, the austere, and boundary pushing structures, all played against and pushed onto the next level by Nakahara incredible talent. Unflinchingly beautiful and creatively challenging, Shock! Shock! Shock! completely defies genre and definition, rising as a wonderful reminder of what noise music is all about. A justly radical zone of creative patchwork sound that renders an engrossing listen that you can’t pull out of once you’re in. Released in an edition of 299 copies sole, unquestionably one of our favorite reissues of the year. Absolutely stunning, this is a stone-cold killer that can’t be missed.

Don’t DJ meets Fourth World, Indonesian Music and Exotic Ambient Sound! Asa Tone is a multidisciplinary, multinational group formed in New York City comprised of Melati Malay, Tristan Arp and Kaazi. Originally commissioned by Yu Su as an event-specific work for the New Forms Festival in Vancouver in 2020, Asa Tone worked together virtually during quarantine, embracing new approaches in chance-based composition. The group’s members individually recorded a pool of generative loops and field recordings in lieu of performed “songs,” adhering to general tempo and key parameters, yet each responding to their respective lockdown environments in Mexico City, New York and the Australian rainforest. From this nonlinear web of possibilities, Asa Tone prepared a continuous 30 minute piece via zoom, which was later adapted and spatialized for the 4D sound / 32-channel audio system at Lobe Studios in Vancouver by producer and festival curator Yu Su.

Gigi Masin, a composer from Venice, Italy, who made a name for himself in the world through a major compilation work by . The limited edition work released with a photobook in 2016 will be reissued with additional unreleased songs! The long-awaited expanded reprint of the finest property created by <13>, a sub-label of the Italian experimental sanctuary , has been released. The best title, released as a homage to his hometown of Venice, and recommended as one of the most beautiful and impressive works by the legendary Italian minimalist. This is the first time for cassette / LP.

The Caretaker is a dark ambient who has been making cross-border music under a number of names including The Stranger and V/Vm. The Caretaker is a dark ambient gentleman who has been making cross-border music under many names, including The Stranger and V/Vm, etc. The first half of the album, which was romantically sparkling with cheerful sampled melodies from pre-war SP discs, has been blown away, and the cruel noise sounds that are beyond decadence and collapse are exchanged. As time progresses, the darkness and depth deepen, and you can only sink into the face of this overwhelming music that is so isolated.

Mark Leckey presents the soundtrack to his autobiographical allegory ‘O’ Magic Power of Bleakness’, a mind sluicing fantasy inspired by folklore and half-remembered tales of teenage life growing up in the Wirral, a personal history woven into screwed 808s, ringtones, sacred chimes, smudged synths and levitating ambience that sounds like nowt else.

Following his seminal, hauntological trips ‘Fiorucci Made me Hardcore’ (2012) and ‘Dream English Kid 1964 - 1999AD’ (2016); the 3-part accompaniment to ‘O' Magic Power Of Bleakness’ captures the Turner Prize-winning artist moving beyond signature collage tekkers to create an entirely original arrangement for his latest audio-visual installation at Tate Britain in 2019 - a life-size replica of a motorway bridge on the M53 on the Wirral, Merseyside. In situ, the soundtrack is a vital component of the installation, livicating its liminal space with a narrative arc that magically turns familiar, popular and folkwise tropes into an occultural tale about provenance and a reminder of the supernatural in the modern world.

Leckey approaches the piece as "an autobiographical allegory” in an attempt to locate the enduring enigma of sub/urban British life with uncanny insight. Alongside his own narration, a plethora of Scouse-kids play out the story of an aspirational kid who escapes the Wirral not to London, but to the faerie realm spoken of in Northern European folklore. When he crashes down to earth, his friends don't understand who, or what, he's become. It ultimately concludes in a symphonic supernatural riot, culminating a sort of metaphysical transformation common to Traditional Ballads and reminding us of the angel/redemption sequence at the end of Lynch’s ‘Fire Walk With Me’.

'O' Magic Power Of Bleakness’ is a well-worn story that's brutally familiar to anyone who's escaped the clutches of one of Britain's forgotten, Tory-scoured battlefields. But Leckey's treatment is transformative; he offsets observed reality with the surreal verve of folklore like a theme park ride thru a Britain the country prefers not to remember, decorated with themes that have been looped around our collective consciousness for thousands of years. Leckey’s art has essentially come to reflect the psyche of a generation, divining the poetic and occult from the seeming banality of British life by tapping into leylines that riddle the concrete landscape to the imagination. Specifically (if allegorically) it’s Leckey’s life in focus but, on the broadest level, the work speaks to the politics of big town parochiality vs. the elusive lure of big city glitter, in a way that’s bound to resonate with many listeners who’ve made that same transition and questioned their place in-between worlds in the process.

180G heavy vinyl. The long awaited remastered vinyl reissue of the first album from 2001 by Pub, the ambient/electronica genius from Glasgow who has been making music since he was 14 years old and runs Ampoule. While the original LP version has been rising in price, this 2LP reissue is finally available as a 20th anniversary edition. It's a chill ambient gem that sublimates into a polished beauty by stoically pursuing a simple sound, with a relentless repetition of rough beats and a sweet daydream-like synthscape entwined therein. Remastered by Dubplates & Mastering, this album is highly recommended for fans of Porter Ricks and Boards Of Canada!

On behalf of re:discovery records, it is with great excitement that we announce the release of the Mysteries of Science compilation. Mysteries of Science aka Dominic Woosey (Neutron 9000) was a fixture of the ambient, ambient house and trance scene in the late 80s until the mid 90's.

These selections have been carefully chosen to show the timeless sound crafting Dominic was capable of with his wide array of sound modules. They range from space music, ambient to a proto-techno and back again. In the vein of Berlin School ambient or Tangerine Dream type sequencing, but made during the post-rave world of the early 1990s during the chill out era. Tracks to search the stars with! All of them are here for the first time on vinyl and were chosen in this order for the best listening experience.

'Virtual Wake' starts off the a side with the opening track from the self titled Mysteries of Science album. Eerie and spacey it welcomes you to the scientific space music Dominic Woosey so much excelled in. 'Technological Womb' is from the 2nd self-titled album and further hones in on the sci-fi ominous journey. 'Diffusion' bridges the album with a fantastic voyage into floating space. Finally on side d has 2 tracks featured on compilations only at the time. 'Chaos Pleasures' & 'Stranger in a Strange Land'. Both show the avante-garde approach Dominic took with this project even including an acid line combined with a violin! Yes, you heard that right! Space music at it's pinnacle in the analog sequencer realm before the true digital age. 5 songs with nearly 60 minutes of beauty. Take a listen! 

On behalf of re:discovery records, it is with great excitement that we announce the release of Deep Space Network's 'Big Rooms'. Deep Space Network was a joint project by David Moufang (Move D) & Jonas Grossman and it explored electronic music that wonderfully combined ambient, chill out themes, sci-f techno and IDM. Originally released on David Moufang's Source Records and distributed by Instinct Records in America a year after. Now, 27 years later, finally released on vinyl for the very first time with original artwork with a gatefold cover

Already low stock at the distributor. A miraculous analog release of the first collaborative work between masters Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Toop, an album that includes the entire concert held in London in August 2018! They have collaborated with Evan Parker, Akiko Yano, Arto Lindsay, Christian Fennesz, and many others in various fields, including film music, sessions in the popular music field, and sound installations. The title is inspired by Japanese horticultural aesthetics, and the recording is a masterpiece of minimalism, with spatial metaphors woven throughout by the two artists' outstanding aesthetic sense.

Michèle Bokanowski's art is one of densities, much like the density of a given colour, a given depth. Her sound textures are, indeed, profound, both in the space occupied by their frequencies and the sharp temporal trail they leave behind. Here lies the composer's immense talent that finds the right development for each sound, letting it blossom before altering it, adapting the musical structure to let the sounds “be”, even if it sometimes means returning to the most basic form, such as a loop. This is a sign of great honesty and artistic sensitivity; able to stand back and let the music become music. It is the most radical, the most accurate gesture of composition. The two pieces on this record, dissociated in time, both in their approach and destination, nevertheless reflect, each in its own way, Michèle Bokanowski's highly singular and insightful musical intuition. François Bonnet, Paris, 2020.

ミュージック・コンクレート創始者、ピエール・シェフェールによって設立されたフランス音楽研究グループ〈INA-GRM〉の最重要人物にして、Aphex TwinやAutechre、Keith Fullerton Whitmanにも影響を与えた仏の電子音楽家Bernard Parmegiani。69年にLPリリースされた激レア・アルバム「Violostries / Bidule En Ré / Capture Éphémère」より”Violostries”、そして、同アルバムに収録された”Capture éphémère”の88年ステレオ・リミックス版、72年度発表「Chronos」に収録されていた”La Roue Ferris”の3曲をコンパイルした電子音楽好き必携の特大編集盤が〈Editions Mego〉と〈INA-GRM〉協賛で運営される重要レーベル〈RECOLLECTION GRM〉から登場！1965年4月にフランスの“Royan Festival”にて、Devy ErlihとBernard Parmegianiによって初演及び録音された作品であり、作曲家／演奏者と楽器／オーケストラの同時対話として提示される、幾つかの音楽研究の方向性の交差点を表すという”Violostries”（1963年〜64年）、パリの〈Maison de la Radio〉のStudio 105にて67年5月に初演、録音したにも関わらず存在し続ける存在し続ける「時間の経過と共に循環するノイズ」である”Capture éphémère”（1967年に作曲、88年版）、マントンの”Festival des chantiers navals”にて71年8月26日に初演、観覧車を回転させることで、そのレゾナンスと融合して、そのバリエーションをどこまでも永続させ、一定の軸を中心に定期的に進化する動きをスケッチするという”La Roue Ferris” (1971年)の3作品を収録。Rashad Beckerによって〈Dubplates & Mastering〉にてカッティング。Stephen O'Malleyによるレイアウト。やはりクオリティは折り紙付きです！

New York-based artist Eli Keszler is at the apex of his career. This year alone he’s had a three-month-long solo exhibition (“Blue Skies” at Fuse Arts, Bradford, UK), performed internationally in a duo with Laurel Halo, collaborated with noted Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, taught experimental composition and performance at Camp in the Pyrenees mountains, composed music for Turner Prize–winning visual artist Laure Prouvost, and most recently embarked on a world tour with Oneohtrix Point Never.

“Stadium” is his new album for Shelter Press. As his ninth solo record,“Stadium” reflects his move from South Brooklyn to Manhattan, where he produced the album. The constant blurry motion and ever-changing landscapes of the fast-paced island helped him modify and shape his sound into a new kind of film noir. “After we moved into our East Village apartment,” Keszler explains, “we found a guitar pick on the floor that read ‘Stadium’. We looked at each other at the same time and had the same thought. It could have gone any number of ways.” Indeed, there is a startling amount of expression at play on each track, where intersections of melody, restraint and rhythm are used to challenge the idea of memory, impression and space.

Keszler is often mistaken for an electronic musician, but in fact his sounds are raw and natural, produced by hand live in-situ. His performance with the drumset and acoustic percussion are central to his work. He produces almost impossible textures through self-realized methodologies: cascading melodies, a shadow of voices, and a unique pointillistic materiality. Although playing with the intensity of digitally-created music, his communications are done live with no processing. These haptics are what give “Stadium” its depth and its warmth. In a recent interview for Dazed, collaborator Oneohtrix Point Never comments, “I’ve always described his playing as bacterial. He’s able to parallax into very small, very acute, very specific relationships between percussive textures. It’s beyond just being a drummer—he’s a world-building percussionist.”

In “Stadium,” Keszler uses lived experience to realize the most wide-ranging sound he’s created to date. “Stadium” draws out textures from overlapping geographies (from Shinjuku arcades to city streets and Brutalist architecture) and transforms these travelogue field recordings into starting points for composition. He then builds on these environments to create subliminal spaces for his percussion, keyboards and acoustic instruments. His “world-building” techniques are pushed to new levels with mesmerizing string and brass arrangements. Throughout the album, Keszler’s writing, keyboard playing and scoring operate like a sonic channel that transports the listener into a quaking web.

Perhaps this is the “stadium” referred to in the title: a larger network of sound and bodies moving continually, oscillating and turning in on itself. Keszler has explored these ideas before both in his visual work and sound installations—especially notable on projects such as his massive Manhattan Bridge installation ‘Archway’ or his Boston City Hall work «Northern Stair Projection.» “Stadium” takes these long-running ideas to new depths. “My installations work with massive city spaces for a complex of individuals,” Keszler states. “The recordings on Stadium are inverted. They are landscapes scaled for the singular. Like a mass collecting in one arena, this music compresses city spaces, genre and instrumentalism into an amorphous form. On the record, there are ruptures of information and happenstance. Like a game, it could go any number of ways.”

"The album's one of Ra's greatest from the 70s -- recorded in Italy in 1978, and featuring some incredibly otherworldly keyboards that are some of his most enigmatic on record! Original tracks from the album include "Disco 3000", an incredible workout on synthesizer, with a tiny bit of drum machine, a little "Space Is The Place" breakdown, and all of the wild sound you'd expect from a Sun Ra album -- plus more long tracks -- the sweetly soulful "Friendly Galaxy", a great soul jazz number, and "Dance Of The Cosmo Aliens", which has spooky organ, frenetic bass, and somber percussion" Check!

2 x LP in die cut card inner sleeves, in wide spine outer sleeve with thumb cut and embossed cover, postcard sticker insert, download card insert

A1 Acroyear2
A2 777
B1 Rae
B2 Melve
B3 Vose In
B4 Fold4,Wrap5
C1 Under BOAC
C2 Corc
C3 Caliper Remote
D1 Arch Carrier
D2 Drane2

2 x LP in printed inners with spot UV, in wide spine outer with spot UV, download card insert

A1 Cipater
A2 Rettic AC
A3 Tewe
B1 Cichli
B2 Hub
C1 Calbruc
C2 Recury
D1 Pule
D2 Nuane

This is the first analogue release in 18 years of the CD release from These Records, which was released in 1993 on the UK experimental/recording label. This is a compilation of material from 1979 and 1980, newly remastered from the original tapes. This is an official release endorsed by the original members, Charles Bullen and Charles Hayward.

Formed in 1976 in Brixton, a multicultural, and - at the time - down-at-heel part of south London, This Heat were born into a music scene in rapid flux, first thanks to the punk explosion and then via new wave and its myriad offshoots into pop, rock and art-rock. But while many sought to apply punk attitude to chart-friendly sounds, This Heat were concocting some of the most experimental ideas ever committed to tape, taking influence from musique concrète, krautrock, the burgeoning industrial scene and even the dub reggae blasting out in their home borough. Given the difficult, abrasive, and involved nature of their furiously forward-thinking sound, This Heat never found anything approaching mainstream success, but patronage by the influential Radio 1 DJ John Peel meant they reached a national audience - whether that audience was ready for them or not. Made Available collects This Heat's two Peel Sessions, recorded for BBC Radio 1 in April and October of 1977 and features essential songs that would later appear on their debut album, This Heat (1979) and the follow-up, Deceit (1981), as well as electro-acoustic works unique to these sessions. These are the earliest public recordings of the band, showing even in their infancy, masterful use of live tape loops and radical song structure. Following Modern Classics Recordings' 2016 reissue campaign to mark the band's 40th anniversary, these new releases Made Available, Repeat / Metal and Live 80 - 81 round out the story. Each release is sanctioned by surviving members Charles Bullen and Charles Hayward and features newly remastered audio sourced from original tapes.

Recommended for fans of Bjork, Radiohead, Gabi and Holly Herndon. Maarja Nuut is a female singer and violinist from Estonia who has collaborated with dub and ambient wizards Sun Araw and Pjusk (12k, Dronarivm). The album features guest drummer Nicolas Stocker on several tracks. The album opens with the percussive and cosmic electrified jazz of "Hinged". On "Kutse Tantsule_A Call To Dance," he sings with a freshness reminiscent of Bjork, over a minimal rhythm of sparkling synths. A Feast" is a hypnagogic and haunting minimalist dance-pop song. This is an important electronic pop album of the year that is recommended to a wide range of listeners, from contemporary jazz to trip-hop to new age listeners. Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri (!), a master of modern classical/drone music.

The Space Lady began her odyssey on the streets of San Francisco in the late ‘70s, playing versions of contemporary pop music an accordion and dressed flamboyantly, transmitting messages of peace and harmony. Following the theft of her accordion, The Space Lady invested in a then-new Casio keyboard, birthing an otherworldly new dimension to popular song that has captured the imaginations of the underground and its lead exponents ever since, with the likes of John Maus, Erol Alkan and Kutmah being devotees.  Of her early street sets, only one recording was made, self-released originally on cassette and then transferred to a home-made CD. The Space Lady’s Greatest Hits (LSSN021) features the best of these recordings―mostly covers but with some originals―pressed on vinyl for the first time and features archival photographs and liner notes from The Space Lady herself. Greatest Hits contains The Space Lady’s personal favourites; her haunting take on The Electric Prunes’ “I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night),” a frantic “Ballroom Blitz” amidst other reconstructed pop music. Included are also four originals that easily match for the Pop canon. Following the release of this archive, The Space Lady will be issuing new material and travelling the world to present her message outside the United States for the first time.   In the mid ‘90s The Space Lady packed away her Casio synth and silenced her distinctive voice, retiring from the streets of San Francisco. Now, more than 30 years after her initial forays on Haight Ashbury, she has surfaced with the first ever official release of her timeless, startling music and, even more remarkably, has re-started her live career. Now in Colorado, The Space Lady continues to spread her message of peace, harmony and love. 

Originally recorded and released in 1988, Nurse With Wound’s ambient opus was years ahead of its time, a ground-breaking set of atmospheric sound patterns designed for ritual ceremonies. Hailed as a masterpiece on release, it soon became a firm favorite of NWW fans and topped the world ambient chart for over three months!
 
Originally a limited-edition three-album set housed in a handsome 12-inch gold and black foil embossed box, this new edition, a CD facsimile of the original vinyl set, contains the entire album plus 40 minutes of superb quality, previously unreleased music from the original sessions. A gold foil blocked cover and new parchment insert makes this one of United Jnana’s most elegant and desirable releases to date.

Although Barton and his wife Priscilla McLean have had a long and distinguished history of LP and compact disc albums throughout their professional composer/performer career, this album is unique in that it is the first one to present, on one CD, such a broad and comprehensive picture of their purely electronic music, spanning 1975 through 2001. Interestingly, although their materials and equipment have changed, their ideas of musical composition are still basically the same, creating a unity throughout the CD.

Regarding the graphic score of "Song of the Nahuatl" which comprises the cover of this CD, Barton McLean and graphic artist Gary Pyle felt a need to explore the subconscious visual domain suggested by the sounds. The artistic rendering preserves dynamics, timing, relative high and low pitch areas, and textural/timbral aspects, while presenting a truly artistic expression in its own right.

To impart a sense of the meaning and composition of these works, along with offering a glimpse into the milieu in which they were created, the following excerpts are quoted here from Priscilla McLean's new autobiography "Hanging off the Edge: Revelations of a Modern Troubadour", published by iUniverse (New York, Lincoln, NE, Shanghai) and also available with corresponding CD, featuring excerpts of her music described in the book, at:
Throughout the time span of the works on this album, Priscilla McLean kept detailed journals of her experiences, forming the basis of her autobiography. These excerpts, abridged and slightly altered, are imbedded in the more specific program notes on each work below.
Book Excerpt: from HANGING OFF THE EDGE, pp. 149 - 159

1973 -1978: South Bend, Indiana to Austin, Texas:
In 1973, Indiana University at South Bend (where Barton McLean taught) ordered from the EMS Studios in London a Synthi-100 synthesizer and digital 256 sequencer, which comprised the first commercial digital sequencing capability in the USA. By 1971 we had also begun our own home studio, purchasing a new Arp 2600 Synthesizer and three reel-to-reel tape recorders: two two-channel half-track Revoxes and a four-channel quarter-track Sony, and borrowing from the college a small Synthi AKS Synthesizerムan update of the EMS Putney, with a ribbon keyboard and 256-note real-time sequencer.

When Bart introduced me to the new studio with the Synthi-100, I stared unbelievingly here was a huge synthesizer, along a whole wall, with hundreds of push-pins (a matrix setup for connecting sounds, rather than the old patch cords), and twenty-two oscillators! The Synthi-256 Digital Sequencer was a full-sized keyboard, standing alone diagonally to the analog synthesizer, but connected internally.
In that studio with the giant machines, one raced from one end of the room to another to play and record the sounds, never sitting down, and in removing unwanted noise or editing out a recorded section, the composer had to take a metal splicing block and sharp razor blade, and pressing down very hard, cut through the 1-inch wide acetate tape in two places, remove the unwanted time segment, and rejoin the two remaining ends with special splicing tapeノSo we three Bruce, Bart, and I worked all our spare time, alternating with each other, in the I.U.S.B. Studio. I spent whole days there, sometimes 22 hours long, working and working to get just the right sound-combinations and record them

The McLean Mix
[NOTE: The McLean Mix, composing/performing duo of Barton and Priscilla McLean, has toured worldwide since 1974, and annually since 1983.]
The McLean Mix was born on September 19, 1974, in our World Premiere concert at St. Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana. The faculty, of which I was an adjunct professor, was delighted when I offered to perform with Bart our new electronic music, consisting of Gone Bananas by Bart, as he soloed on the Arp 2600. This was a light piece, and ended with Bart, having set the synthesizer to play the music by itself on its sample and hold controller, sitting on the edge of the stage eating a banana! Second was my Night Images six-minute stereo tape work. Next came my "Dance of Dawn", 22 minutes long. We finished the evening with a jazzy piece by Bart called Groove, which had us jamming on two synthesizers the Arp 2600 for me, and Bart on the Synthi AKS. These early live-performance compositions suffered the demise of all such pieces of the period, but fascinated the audience at the time they who had never heard any live electronic music. The works for stereo tape lived on, however.

"During the halcyon days of the 70's, when all electronic music was enthusiastically received and the audiences large and eager, an album produced out of this concert (CRI SD 335 with Priscilla's "Dance of Dawn" and Barton's "Spirals") garnered a dozen reviews from all over America, and the composers were looked upon as courageous explorers into a vast musical continent unknown and beckoning.

In August of 1976 we moved to Austin, Texas. After the Synthi-100 was removed from the Indiana University, South Bend Electronic Music Studio in 1974, we were left with its digital sequencer, a small ElectroComp 101 Synthesizer, the mini-synthesizer Synthi AKS, and the tape recorders and mixer. This wasn't enough to continue any quality work, so we added our own home studio equipment, and turned back to manipulating found soundsムsteak knives bouncing on violin strings, tennis balls on the piano harp, banging pots and pans, etc. All of these sounds in addition to ones from the synthesizers and sequencer I used in my next major electronic piece, "Invisible Chariots". Because of the unwieldiness of the musique concrete (recorded, not synthesized, sounds) medium, composing the piece was glacially slow.

For instance, the first sound is a scrape up a bass piano string with a metal bar. I wanted the echo from the piano to last over thirty seconds, so I had to record it onto a master tape, then re-record the echo from this tape to each of four channels of another tape recorder, recording each successive one a few seconds ahead of the last one, over and over, until thirty seconds evolved. Then I combined the beginning piano flourish, recorded at home, with a similar keyboard flourish created on the Arp 2600 Synthesizer and performed, playing (forwards and backwards) on the Synthi 256 Sequencer. Much more was involved to complete this complex beginning sound, and two months of time for thirty seconds of music!
After lying low since our performance in the old UT electronic music studio a few weeks after we arrived in Austin in 1976, The McLean Mix was revived and had several engagements the spring of 1979. This included Bart's new electronic piece "Song of the Nahuatl", finishing with my "Invisible Chariots", with all three movements. This varied according to the audience and schedule. [end of paraphrased excerpt]