Terry Riley / Pierre Mariétan - Keyboard Study 2 / Initiative (+Systèmes)

Terry Riley, as I have to assume anyone reading this site would already know, is one of the originators of classical minimalism. His 1964 composition "In C" is indisputably one of the classics of the 20th century.

"Keyboard Study 2" is from around the same time as "In C". Riley first recorded this piece himself on his Reed Streams LP of 1964 (there called "Untitled Organ"). It consists of a set of modules which the performer is to repeat as many times as they want before moving on to the next module, similar to "In C" and other pieces from that period like "Olson III" and "Tread on the Trail".

This particular LP was released originally on the great BYG label of France, which mostly released classic American free jazz and European psychedelic and progressive rock. Keyboard Study 2 / Initiative (+Systèmes) was one of the few modern classical releases on the label. Unfortunately it shares with all BYG releases a poor recording and a plethora of semi-official releases of dubious provenance and quality.

This seems to be the earliest recording of a Terry Riley piece done without Riley performing, and is also notable for being a very early European performance of American minimalist music. In 1968, when this was recorded, Riley wouldn't have been that well known yet, with his "In C" LP just having come out earlier that same year.

"Keyboard Study 2" has been recorded several other times over the years, though the number of recordings doesn't even begin to approach the dozens of recordings of "In C" out there. Riley's own version on the Reed Streams LP of 1964 was performed on an electronic organ, overdubbed, and sounds quite a bit like his later organ improvisations like "Persian Surgery Dervishes". That album was re-released on CD in 2007 on Elision Fields, and you can still buy it here, though it looks like it may be out of print again. Steffan Schleiermacher made an excellent, though somewhat loosely interpreted version in the late 1990s on MDG Records, with computer-controlled digital pianos, and there's another version on Stradivarius recorded just a couple of years ago by Fabrizio Ottaviucci.

This here version was performed by Martine Joste and Gerard Frémy, a french new music pianist of note, who I've also heard on an excellent recording of John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano from the late 1970s. He has also recorded several other pieces by Cage as well as works by Luc Ferrari and Stockhausen.

This recording is particularly interesting for its production through overdubbing several different sessions, creating the sound of an army of pianos playing endlessly. Mostly the sound is purely textural, a dense drone of pianos, but sometimes individual lines pop out of the texture above the rest. The poor recording quality actually enhances the sound of the piece, blurring everything together into a beautiful, dense mess. It's without a doubt my favorite version of "Keyboard Study 2", even well eclipsing Riley's own recording.

The second half of the LP is a piece by Pierre Mariétan, called "Initiative (+Systèmes)" performed by GERM (Groupe d'Étude et Réalisation Musicale), a nine-piece ensemble, including Frémy and Joste as well as Mariétan himself. Mariétan came out of the serialist school, having worked early on with Stockhausen and Boulez, but by the late 1960s was writing frameworks for improvisation and similar chance-based pieces.

"Initiative (+Systèmes)" is along similar lines to any number of semi-improvised group pieces of that era. The sound consists of mostly short noisy gestures, atonal, though the pianos sometimes provide some rhythmic underpinning to the piece. That said, it's certainly not a bad performance, there are some rather interesting sections and events, but it's very much a piece of its time, and it's a somewhat odd choice for the b-side to "Keyboard Study 2". It's worth a listen, but I doubt it'll become anyone's favorite piece.

This rip is from a CD edition of the album released in 1998 on Spalax Music, a label that has mostly released obscure Krautrock re-issues and other psychedelic musics of the late '60s and early '70s. I think this recording is still available at the moment as an LP reissue on Get Back (Forced Exposure has it here), but I've found their releases to be very poor quality on the whole. This Spalax edition is well out of print, and the album is not available anywhere on CD or digitally right now.

Download 320 kbps mp3s + scans of liner notes (in French)

Malcolm Goldstein - Vision Soundings

Malcolm Goldstein is a composer and improviser with strong aesthetic ties to Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening movement, and he developed his work around the same time as her, from the 1970s to the present. Much of his music consists of his improvised "soundings", which are deep explorations of the different textures which the violin is capable of. He's very committed to improvisation, and the few compositions of his I've heard composed for other people to play also consist of frameworks for improvisation. He has CDs available on XI and New World Records.

Goldstein's work isn't chaotic, jazz-influenced free-improv. His improvisations involve playing one note for extended periods of time with gradual textural variation. It's similar to, again, Pauline Oliveros Deep Listening improvisations, and also brings to mind some of Alvin Lucier and James Tenney's work.

Side A of this LP, "Center of Rainbow, Sounding" is a live recording of a 1983 performance recorded by Phill Niblock at his Experimental Intermedia space. Goldstein plays a sort of screechy rapid tremolo on multiple strings continuously throughout the nearly 20 minutes of this piece, and scarcely varies the pitches he's using. Most of the change in sound comes from changing his bow position and technique. It's not exactly drone music, as it's very active, and the rapid notes never really blend together. It's an interesting exploration of the possibilities of improvised solo minimal violin playing, quite different from the approaches of, say, Tony Conrad or Henry Flynt.

Side B of the LP is "Vision Tree Fragment," a live piece from 1984 recorded at New York's Roulette. This piece has Goldstein drumming and scraping a maple tree limb. Similar to his violin soundings, Goldstein searches the maple limb for different sounds and textures, the sound shifting as he moves around the limb and varies his playing. He also sings long tones to accompany the maple limb, and varies his vocal textures by singing different vowels and such. It has the feeling of a ritualistic, shamanic ceremony. Neat stuff.

Vision Soundings was self-released by Goldstein in 1985. Some CDs of his have other recordings of his Soundings performances, but this LP is the only place these particular ones were released.

Stuart Dempster - On the Boards

Stuart Dempster first came to my attention as a member of The Deep Listening Band along with Pauline Oliveros. As a performer, he played trombone on the original LP of Terry Riley's In C, as well as countless other new music albums, and is a master of circular breathing. Looking at his short bio on Wikipedia, he is also apparently credited with introducing the Didgeridoo to North America.

His own first album In the Great Abbey of Clement VI was originally released in 1977 and is still available on CD on New Albion records, along with a more recent CD from the mid-1990s, Underground Overlays From the Cistern Chapel. Both are fantastic albums of improvised drone music, based around droning trombones, didgeridoos and conchs (on a couple of tracks on Underground Overlays) interacting with the extremely reverberant spaces they were recorded in.

This album was recorded in 1983, and has a similar sound to his other albums, though a rather different approach. The music here is not about an interaction between Dempster and the space he's in, as it was recorded in a fairly ordinary sounding concert hall, but is rather about interactions between himself and the audience.

The first track, "Didjeridervish", was also recorded for In the Great Abbey of Clement VI, in a much longer version. It's performed, as you might guess, on a didgeridoo, and the name comes from the fact that during parts of the piece Dempster spins around, whirling dervish style, while playing the didgeridoo.

The second track, "Roulette", features some audience interaction, as they are instructed to sing an Eb drone. Over this, Dempster plays around with the harmonics of the drone on a trombone, creating a swirling, subtly changing mass of sound.

"Don't Worry, it Will Come" is a strange piece to listen to. It's a recording of a sound installation, the nature of which I can't quite figure out. In the liner notes for the CD Dempster writes, "With hoses hidden under the theater seats, the audience is, indeed, surprised." I think that means Dempster was blowing through hoses, with the other end under the seats of the audience, but I don't know. The sound of the piece ends up being comprised of random horn blasts followed by the audience laughing. Divorced from its installation context, it makes for confusing listening, but it's a short piece, and it gives the album some sonic variety.

The final piece is the lengthiest, the nearly 20-minute long "JDBBBDJ (John Diamond's Big Beautiful Brass Didjeridu)". This piece is named for the instrument which Dempster uses, a custom-made brass didgeridoo with a bugle bell at the end. This exceptional instrument creates strong, unusual overtones, and the audience was instructed to sing along with the low drone or the overtones, creating a beautiful choral sound, with fantastic harmonies and sudden swells. It's incredibly beautiful, and is well-worth the download alone.

This recording was originally released on cassette in 1986, self-released by Dempster, and was re-released on CD in 2001 on Anomalous Records, a great label which released some great experimental and noise music before sadly shutting down in 2004.

David Rosenboom & Donald Buchla - Collaboration in Performance

David Rosenboom was an early proponent of minimalism and live electronic music, and a fantastic classical and free-jazz pianist. As a performer he's worked with LaMonte Young, Anthony Braxton, Jon Hassell, Robert Ashley, and others. He taught at the famous Mills College Centre for Contemporary Music in Oakland throughout the 1980s, and since the 1990s has been heading the music department at CalArts. He's got quite a lot of recordings under his belt, as a performer and composer, including CDs on Lovely, Pogus and Centaur, with recent rereleases of 1970s LPs on Mutable Music, New World and Japan's EM records.

Interestingly, this LP is co-credited to Donald Buchla, designer of the famed Buchla Electric Music Box, one of the earliest modular synthesizers, so favored by Pauline Oliveros, Morton Subotnick and others. He performs some of the synth material on "How Much Better if Plymouth Rock Had Landed on the Pilgrims, Section V".

"And Out Come the Night Ears" takes up the first side of the LP, and is an amazing showcase for Rosenboom's improvising and pianistic skills. Rosenboom plays an unending flurry of notes throughout the piece. His playing is incredibly fast and fleet, more textural than anything else. He runs up and down the keyboard at blinding speed.

Throughout this, a nearby Buchla synthesizer is set up to respond to Rosenboom's playing. It seems like it's probably using a pitch follower, and when he strays into certain areas of the keyboard the synthesizer responds with effects or sounds. Some low pitches cause the synth to make a snare-drum type sound, while other regions respond with synthesized bell-like tones or filtering effects or the like. It's an interesting piece, and again, Rosenboom's playing is extremely impressive without being pointlessly virtuosic. Rosenboom periodically employs the sustain pedal to blur the notes, but this is no "Strumming Music" piano drone piece. It's closer at times to a free jazz improvisation, though I can't think of any particular pianists who play like this.

The last four minutes or so feature Rosenboom repeating a short clustery phrase, which causes the synth to process the sound and create a sort of detuned tremolo effect, with occasional snare synth interjections.

"How Much Better if Plymouth Rock Had Landed on the Pilgrims, Section V" is the only only instance I'm aware of of Donald Buchla himself performing on a record. He and Rosenboom together play the then new Buchla Electric Music Box 300 Series, which from my understanding had an exceptional amount of sequencing capabilities for the time as well as live control over the settings.

The piece features several extremely fast repeating synth melodies playing simple modal scales at varying speeds. It has a strongly Indian feel to it, and is quite reminiscent of some of Terry Riley's late '70s organ improvisations. It's a gorgeous piece, a fantastic example of late 1970s electronic minimalism.

"And Out Come the Night Ears" has been released on CD as a bonus track with Rosenboom's "Future Travel" album on the fantastic New World Records. Apparently, however, this LP features a different excerpt from an hour long improvisation than the CD does. I haven't heard the CD so I don't really know how similar the material is.

"How Much Better if Plymouth Rock Had Landed on the Pilgrims" has been recently released in its entirety, in nine sections, on a double CD also on New World Records. That version consists mostly of new recordings, however, though there seem to be excerpts from this version used in some capacity. Again, I don't have the CD so I don't know exactly what the similarities are.

This LP was released in 1978 by the excellent 1750 Arch records, who released a ton of excellent music from the 1970s to the 80s, including lots of 20th century american classical music and some great free jazz stuff, most of which hasn't been rereleased.

Pauline Oliveros - The Well and the Gentle

Pauline Oliveros is one of the earliest composers linked to the minimalist movement, having worked with Terry Riley beginning in the late 1950s. In San Francisco, she co-founded the famous San Francisco Tape Music Centre with Morton Subotnick, Ramon Sender, William Maginnis and Tony Martin, creating one of the first electronic music studios in North America, and one of the only ones which was not affiliated with a university.

Oliveros began composing primarily electronic music, with early Buchla synthesizers, tape, and various home-made and appropriated electronic equipment. In the 1980s she developed her theory of Deep Listening, and lately has been primarily been playing accordion with some electronic processing, which she calls the Expanded Instrument System.

The first three pieces ("The Well", "The Gentle", and "The Well/The Gentle") all feature Oliveros performing with the Relache ensemble, here also featuring fantastic accordionist Guy Klucevsek. Most of Oliveros' recorded works are her solo playing or small groups (like Deep Listening Band, Carrier Band), so it's great to hear her here in a larger group setting.

"The Well" is a slowly building, droney piece, featuring prominent wordless vocals from singer Barbara Noska. According to the notes, the piece is something of a guided improvisation, with Oliveros conducting the group, and using a pre-determined pitch group.

"The Gentle" is a rather unique piece in Oliveros' canon in that it's very rhythmic. It begins with a basic woodblock beat which continues throughout the piece, and all the players follow the rhythm throughout. It sounds very typically minimalist, in a way, with its insistent continuous pulse. Beautiful piece, and completely unlike any of her other work that I've heard.

The set goes on with "The Well/The Gentle", a shorter, combined version of the first two tracks, which segue nicely from one section to the next.

The rest of the set features some excellent solo accordion and voice pieces from Oliveros, recorded in a giant empty water reservoir in Cologne. Similar, though somewhat more melodic than her later Deep Listening Band work, much of which was recorded in a reservoir in Washington state. The extreme natural reverb washes everything out into a beautiful drone.

This here 2LP set was released in 1985 on the venerable Hat Hut label. About a year ago I saw Oliveros give a talk at my university and she mentioned that Hat Hut was going to be rereleasing is on CD soon. I have yet to see any other evidence of that, and have been checking their website frequently, but I sure do hope that's the case. If they do rerelease it though, they'll probably cut some tracks to fit the 2LP onto one CD (total time is 86 minutes) as they have done many times before. In which case, this rip still won't be totally pointless.

Alvin Curran - Fiori Chiari Fiori Oscuri

Alvin Curran was one of the members of the Musica Elettronica Viva collective, along with Fred Rzewski, Richard Teitelbaum and others.

Curran's first solo album, Songs and Views of the Magnetic Garden, was originally released in 1975, and consisted of largely improvised live electronic and acoustic drone music. Fiori Chiari Fiori Oscuri was released a short while later, and continues in a similar vein, with more soundscapey tapes, vintage synths, and acoustic instruments.

Side one starts with recordings of a cat purring, and then goes through a long series of electronic synthy drone bits, with occasional soundscape recordings underneath the synths.
Side two goes through a lot of change in its 28 minutes, starting with Alexis Rzewski speaking (I'm guessing he was Fred's young son). It goes into some toy piano, then quite a bit of super-fast minimalist piano playing, in the vein of LaMonte Young & Charlemagne Palestine's piano music. The piece ends on some nice improvised jazzy piano, which fades into electronic chimes and tapes of dogs barking.

While Songs and Views was rereleased on Catalyst, a subsidiary of BMG, in the mid-90s, Fiori Chiari has remained out of print for the past 30 + years, never released digitally. Shame. It would be really great if someone out there collected all of these 70s Curran LPs together and rereleased them.

UPDATE:
New World records has, in fact, collected all of Curran's 70s LPs and rereleased them, in a 3CD set. Looks amazing. Took down the download link since this is now commercially available and I don't want to bite into their sales. Go check out the set HERE