10月份第2批貨

nihilist

Laurie Spiegel ~ Obsolete Systems





Laurie Spiegel, electronic music pioneer, has been working with cutting-edge electronic instruments since the 1970s. She has written software, designed systems, and explored most of the early synthesizers. And she's a wonderful composer! The music on this CD is so talented, beautiful, and fascinating that it becomes a stunning demonstration of how musical and humanly expressive technology can be.

The CD also demonstrates relationships between instruments and the music that can be composed for them. Spiegel writes: "Each musical instrument, whether electronic or not, implies an aesthetic domain and sensibility unique to its design ... These are a few I've personally explored. When it was new, each of these music systems, now long obsolete, was state of the art, visionary, radically new and so revolutionary that it required extended explanations in response to common questions such as 'Why would anyone ever want to do that?'"

The compositions and the instruments are: 'Four Short Visits to Different Worlds', which includes 'Swells' (c. 1972) and 'Crying Tone' (1975), both composed with an Electrocomp 100 modular analog synthesizer; 'Mines' (1971) and 'A Garden' (c. 1970), both composed with a Buchla 100 modular analog synthesizer; 'Improvisation on a "Concerto Generator"' (1977), composed with a realtime digital audio synthesizer designed by Hal Alles and others at Bell Labs; 'A Harmonic Algorithm' (1981 version), composed with an Apple II computer with Mountain Hardware oscillator boards; 'Three Modal Pieces' (1983) and 'Immersion' (1983), both composed with the McLeyvier computer-controlled analog synthesis music system;'Drums' (1975), composed with the GROOVE Hybrid System at Bell Labs; 'Voices Within: A Requiem' (1979), composed with an Electrocomp analog synthesizer with classic tape techniques & Echoplex (a tape-delay device of the 1970s).

This CD will give you insights into instruments, knowledge of Laurie Spiegel's work through informative and beautifully written liner notes, and lovely music.



Laurie Spiegel - The Expanding Universe (2012 Expanded Edition)





The Expanding Universe is the classic 1980 debut album by composer and computer music pioneer Laurie Spiegel. The album is reissued here for the first time in a massively expanded two-CD set, containing all four original album tracks plus an additional 15 tracks from the same period, nearly all previously unreleased. Some of the already well-know works included in this set are "Patchwork", the complete "Appalachian Grove" series, and "Kepler's Harmony of the Worlds", which was included on the golden record launched on board the Voyager spacecraft. The pieces comprising The Expanding Universe combine slowly evolving textures with the emotional richness of intricate counterpoint, harmony, and complex rhythms (John Fahey and J. S. Bach are both cited as major influences in the original cover's notes), all built of electronic sounds. These works, often grouped with those of Terry Riley, Phil Glass, Steve Reich, differ in their much shorter, clear forms. Composed and realized between 1974 and 1977 on the GROOVE system developed by Max Mathews and F.R. Moore at Bell Laboratories, the pieces on this album were far ahead of their time both in musical content and in how they were made. Each of the included works broke new ground, pioneering completely new methods of live interaction with computer-based logic - ways of creating music that are now reaching the heights of their popularity with Ableton Live, Max/MSP and other interactive music software entering mainstream music production. The package also includes an extensive 24-page booklet with notes by Laurie Spiegel and period photos.