★Creel Pone
Insight Modulation
The second “Z” creel pone in a row - don’t worry folks, there are plenty more from whence these came. To start off, here’s a blurb I wrote for Pitchfork a few years back that i feel sums this record up on a qualitative scale - even if I've put the pieces together in the interim: "Not much information on this one to work with. No year, no biography, google searches yield ... nothing further. It's Italian; sounds like a fabled "Nurse With Wound Lise" item, although it's not on 'The List,' which …
After Guernica
Once again the “boxes from Reykjavik” have started arriving on Thursday mornings like clockwork; let’s start up again not with an outright explosion of lost Tape-Psych damage - to give us all time to recover - but with a rather remarkable set of subtle, Lo-Fi Electronic compositions composed throughout the 60s & originally released in the early 70s on the private-press “Golden Crest Records, Inc.” label. Of the past Creel Pones, this one has the most in common with the George Engler “Inside of…
La Jolla Good Friday I-II
Reproduction of this 1981 LP featuring two wasted / buzzing / side-long / go-nowhere early Computer-controlled Analogue Synthesizer pieces - rendered via Ed Kobrin's "Hybrid IV" setup - captured on March 28th, 1975 & sounding not unlike an airplane anding / taking off as realized by the programmers of an Atari 2600 console video game. Sigubjörnsson is an interesting character; his "Kisum / Intrada" LP of trio clarinet, viola, & piano pieces was issued by the same pre-Caprice Expo Norr RIKS "Re…
Music To Wash Dishes By
Nice to see this 1982 “Private Press” LP by Chicagoland’s Tom Cameron in the program; I’ve long felt this was one of the better “One Man Against the World ... with Synthesizer” LPs self-financed during the late-70s / early-80s. Each side features an extended, gorgeous take on analogue “Automation” book-ended by two, shorter, more “Accessible” numbers. The A-side’s “Another Question” is an impeccably gaseous, floating void of minimal diminished-minor filigree that rates up there with thebest of…
Sondern die Sterne sind's
Creel-pro of this mid-70s Aulos lp, with Klaus Ager’s three-part “Sondern die Sterne sind's” - recorded in the “Computer Music” studio at EMS Stockholm from 1974-1976 as well as the Electronic Studio at Salzburg’s “Hochschule Mozarteum” - slowly unfolding over the A-side & two shorter chamber pieces, “I Remember a Bird” for clarinet, trombone, guitar, piano, percussion, and tape & “Metaboles i” for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano on the other. Rising from a whisper, the first movement of “S…
Ze Wörmnest
Lovely. Here’s a Creelpro of Jonas Palm’s 1980 Piglet-label outing “Ze Wörmnest,” widely considered as one of the canonic crater-dwellings of early 80s “Minimal Synth” pedagogy. To wit, here’s a perfectly zenzible stammer by John “Inzane” Olson, re: this particular media-carrier: "Man.....super whacked out mumble synth homemade jammer by Jonas Palm. on the rare Piglet records circa 1980. Super mystery sounds from a oozing liquid stranger place inside your slowly vibrating skull. Intense!!! Act…
Provocative Electronics
Creel Pone treatment of this 1970 hidden jewel in the Westminster Gold catalogue - an imprint enjoying something of a cult following amongst record collectors due to their amazing & often ridiculous cover designs - not sure how marketing Wagner / Opera recordings via Psychedelic-era cheesecake sensibilities was deemed “Viable” by the ABC-Dunhill bigwigs, but then again there are scads of things about the late-60s / early-70s that I don’t, and most likely won’t ever, get. Featuring music compos…
Journey to the Land of Forgotten Dreams
Total downer one-man-against the world synth action from one Lorq Damon; “Dedicated to all who believe in the beyond.” The artists’ liners cite strict instructions on how to enjoy this music; i.e. that this “is a psychic experience and not a musical composition.” Whereas the Nik Raicevic material was full of drug-addled, woozy rhythms & off-time pulsing, this is sheer long-form drone-work, bordering on the inaudible in spots. The waves of atonal analogue sound positively peeling off of the chea…
Reality Gates
Creel Pone treatment of this set of deep-fried one-man-against-the-cosmos synth-automaton gunk from the distant US midwest - specifically; Bloomington, Indiana - of the early 70s, initially released on / by the “Custom Fidelity Records” label / plant. Starts out with the absolutely piercing high tones / clarion call of “Music of the Spheres” after which we become the (un)willing passengers on Dr. Steven T. Birchall’s mind-trip excelsior, passing through several key lobes of the beyond before ze…
Electronique Et Stereophonie, Musique Spatiale
Amazing Early Electronic / Experimental Instrument / Tape-Manipulation work from these two Composer / Performers, with Sala perhaps the better known of the two due to his innumerable contributions to film-sound design - he did all of the bird-sounds in Hitchcock’s “The Birds” via the “Trautonium,” Dr. Friedrich Trautwein’s 1929 electronic instrument and Sala’s “axe” - Sala == Trautonium / Clara Rockmore == Theremin. Several facets of the Trautonium’s design lend to an otherworldly timbral palle…
Trip-Tych
Originally brought to light in 1977 by Serenus - the same folks that unleashed the early Creel Pone “Hit,” “The Inside of the Outside ... or the Outside of the Inside”) this is a fine example of a record that straddles the divide between library-music style conventions - many of the pieces are short, melodic numbers of the sort that would dot the silent spaces in a public-tv science program - and wild, free-form synthesizer filigree. Thematically linked into three “Themes”, the A-side’s “The Bi…
Contemporaneos 4, Musica Electroacustica
Last C.P. of 2010, finally available after countless delays, mostly involving the tricky /expert-level remastering job needed to resuscitate this incredible, historically-important music from sub-par vinyl pressings - a high-spec issue of Cuban composer Juan Blanco’s first two Egrem / Areito label LPs, covering his earliest electronic music dating back to 1963. Opening with the token non-electronic “Musica Para un Joven Martir” - or "Music for a Young Martyr" - rife with swelling, Penderecki-ia…
Works of Electronic Music
Something of a “companion” volume to the “Greek Electronic Music -1” compilation (one of the most popular & enduring entries in the early Creel Pone replography) issued a decade later, comprised of late-70s & mid-80s works by a successive generation of “capsule-intakers” as they transition from the “analogue world” into thedigital era, Four pieces from four different composers :: Thanos Mikroutsikos (whose “La Frere” is the token ensemble-sound work amidst the otherwise purely electronic offeri…
Musiques de l'O.N.F., Music of the N.F.B.
reproduction of a lovely 1977 double-lp set collecting only the earliest electronic music made in canada; with a majority of pieces remarkably made without the aid of magnetic tape (!?) but directly on optical film...
music of the n.f.b. (volume 1)audio without visualthis album offers an unusual opportunity to discover the "sound dimensions" of the national film board of canada. this is not, however, a matter of "film music" or "theme songs". the sound tracks to be found here, detached from the…
The Inside of the Outside, or The Outside of the Inside
"Who Are They? Where Do They Come From? Why are They Here?" After a short beauty res(e)t, Creel Pone returns borne anew with this pristine nugget, a reproduction of this 1965 Serenus-label lp by one George Engler - with one piece credited to “Heinz Karl Gruber” attributed to “The Inside of the Outside /or The Outside of the Inside." One can glean all sorts of hypochondroid vibes from the title & liners alone, even before the music itself hits your ears - a fine mist of space-age paranoic Lo-Fi …
Tropes on the Salve Regina
I've heard rumo(u)r of the Creel Pone "shortlist"; i.e. the member-curated selection of "candidates" for the Creel Pone treatment, each title nominated then judged according to strict set of attributes found running throughout the series (intangible qualities, mind you, such as "zonked" - "private-universe / bedroom" - "against-grain" - "aleatoric" - etc ...) Up high on said list all along has been this gem; Michael Sahl's first release, "Tropes on the Salve Regina." This one fits in so perfectl…
Iowa Ear Music
This one’s certainly a mold-breaker; closer in spirit to Cage / Tudor’s “Indeterminacy” than the sort of bedroom solo composer / producer / performer LPs that have been the Creel Pone archetype thus far. Improvisors were set up in 4 different isolation booths in the studio in Iowa State University’s recording studio during the ‘67 - ’75 seasons; these simultaneously-ocurring sound-events captured in real time, then collaged via tape & electronic processing by the studio-head Michael Lytle after…
Electronic Tricks
L’Illustration Musicale - more commonly known as simply “IM” - was a Parisian production library active during the early to mid 70s, during which they issued a couple-dozen titles by the cream of the crop: Eddie Warner, Johnny Hawksworth, Bernard “Black Devil” Fevre, Jacky Giordano, and the two guilty parties concerned here - Peter Bonello - aka Georges Teperino, aka Nino Nardini - & Roger Roger - his actual, real name, aka Cecil Leuter, Eric Swan, aka Archie Gun. An honest-to-goodness “Split;”…
Musica Elettronica 1
Here’s something of a Holy Grail amongst the “Electronic Library” spec; Romolo Grano’s 1973 Joker-label “Musica Elettronica 1,” touted as no less than an all-encompassing “New Dimension in Sound, Electronically Tested in Sound Laboratory,” The polar opposite of “Groovy” libraries by the likes of Cecil Leuter, Georges Teperino, and Giampero Boneschi, this sits comfortably alongside the dark, brooding minimal electronics of Giorgio “Zanagoria” Carnini & Giuliano Sorgini’s work, offering up a sele…
IPEM 1963-73
Easily the most elusive of the three “I.P.E.M.” (Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music) titles released by Alpha Brussels (you want to do this? alright, here we go - this one, CP 138, was the first to be released, SP-6015, 1973 - followed by CP 085, “I.P.E.M. (aka “Harry Sparnaay • Lucien Goethals • Louis De Meester”)”, SP-6028, 1975 - then, finally CP 053, “Elektronische Produktie van I.P.E.M. (aka “Muziek in Vlaanderen”), DBM-N 257, 1978) - this collection of pieces by Karel Goey…