★Creel Pone
Aphorisms Insane, 00 Time
A pair of albums at the absolute extreme edge of what can rightfully be considered "Berlin School" Electronic Music music, conjured by the core duo of Walter Heinisch & Karl Kronfeld - with Gerhard Lisy participating only in the former - released in 1980 & 1984, respectively, on (oddly) CBS Austria, and the pair's own Synoptik imprint.
Coming from an aesthetic waypoint far closer to Seeselberg's "Synthetik-1" than anything from the cosmos-gazing Schülze / TD canon, the (burnt) offerings herein, …
Creelpolation 1
To celebrate the 50th Creel Pone release - damn; that blew right by us, didn't it?! - Mr. P.C. C.P. has prepared for us this extremely attractive & quite special triple-disc compilation, which reproduces scads of early-electronic seven inch single records (Disc 1), individual pieces from otherwise non-Creel-Pone worthy LP records (Disc 2), and full LP sides (Disc 3).Looking at the tracklisting, it's clear that someone has done his homework - inside we get obscure pieces by Michael Adamis, André …
Luna Cinese
Creel Pone rendition of this elusive 1975 Cramps Nova Musicha series (N.7) LP by the Romanian Composer Costin Miereanu, “put on the map” (so to speak) by its inclusion in the infamous Nurse With Wound list. I've always found it baffling that; of all of the Cramps titles reissued and re-reissued over the past few years, this piece, considered by many followers of the “Dark Side-long Aleatoric Electro-Acoustic Collage” aesthetic - see Dub Taylor, Luis De Pablo, Jean Claude Eloy, et.al - to be one …
The Complete Badger Recordings
OK, this one takes a little bit of explaining - on the surface, yes, another set of Moogsploitation joints, but closer in fact to the Holy Grail of said. Released in 1972 & 1975, this pair of obscure, self-released LPs issues some of the first “Pop” music ever made on the Moog Synthesizer by one of the first people to own a system - famously, choreographer Alwin Nikolais got the first off the line, but library music composer Eric Siday & the subject here were among Moog’s initial customers - Jaz…
Reflecting On The First Watch ...
Once again, leave it to Mr. P.C. C.P. to unearth yet another recording that not only haven’t I heard; I hadn’t even heard of it until the faithful Thursday afternoon box from Reykjavik. Originally released in 1978 on the Northfield, Vermont based Green Mountain records, “Cellutron & the Invisible” is (apparently) the brain-child of one Robert S. Greely. I’ve tried my usual sources for more information, but all i get are dead links and references to the LP itself.In my mind, this is right up ther…
Les Sons Électroniques
… and we're back on track; Creel Pone here returning from a two-month hiatus with this superb collection of minimal bleepery from noted library music composer Cecil Leuter - aka Roger Roger - originally issued by the Neuilly label in 1971. This isn't exactly the funk & bleep fest of Leuter's recently reissued "Pop Électronique," instead a set of short, thematic pieces consisting of abstract electronics, gated vocals, rudimentary rhythm-box studies, and some inspired Sun Ra / Cecil Taylor lineage…
Aguas Territoriales, Caballos
First Creel Pone double-artist twofer - odd, considering how many opportunities to handle things this way have arisen over the years - topically linked by the label that initially released them, Empresa Grabaciones R E M, or EGREM's Areito, and the topic & time-period in question; Electro-Acoustic Music in Cuba, early 80s edition.
First up is Carlos Fariñas' "Aguas Territoriales" - two side-length pieces for errant electronics & Concrète sounds. While the A-side's minimal, misted "Madrigal" cove…
Sonoma
While Creel Pone has done a bang-up job at documenting non-Subotnick alternatives such as Michael Czajkowski's "People the Sky," Douglas Leedy's "Entropical Paradise", etc. there's, simply, not a lot of music out there made on the early Buchla systems; which makes this hiterhto undiscussed collection of pieces by the composer Carter Thomas, all recorded between 1971 & 1977, then issued in 1985, something of a unheralded gem.
Starting with "800th Lifetime" - an 11-minute suite for Buchla 100 & 20…
Electronic Music for Dance
Here’s a fine set of pieces, each showcasing the Buchla electric music box. Daria Semegen’s harmonic-series-rich “Arc” - composed at SUNY Stonybrook’s electronic music studio, established by mr. Arel in 1971 - at times recalls other era electronic “Spectralists” like Daniel Arfib, yet works across a more spare iterative space, often recycling short micro-melodies cut with the unmistakable thwack of the Buchla’s vactrol-based gates. It’s an incredible, patient piece of music that begs the questio…
Encore Electronic
After something of a break, Creel Pone returns, borne anew, with this reproduction of an obscure 1975 Standard Library offering (#ESL-133), dovetailing tracks by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop / White Noise member Brian Hodgson & previous Creel Pone "graduate" John Lewis (whose lengthy collaboration with composer John Keliehor, "Schizophrenia" closes out the otherwise all-Dubravko Detoni "Avantgarde" volume from Studio G, issued the previous year) - both founders of Electrophon studios & the lone …
Mental Sailing
After a short break - during which we all celebrated Creel Pone's 10th year of existence in style & the PTB worked quite hard at keeping the program's core largely available for a stretch - here's a reproduction of an unheard-of 1981 set of Electronic Music by the Chicagoland Composer Beverly De Fries D'Albert privately issued via the Columbus, OH pressing-plant / private imprint Coronet. Subtitled "Electronic Music Album Number 1," the album is split between three shorter pieces recorded at the…
Espaces Sonores Nº 1
Long one of my all-time Holy Grail cannot-find-a-copy titles is the LP in question here; the 1969 EMI-label Arlette Sibon-Simonovitch recital / vehicle “Espaces Sonores Nº 1”, offering a side of specially-commissioned pieces each by spanish composer Josep(h)-Maria Mestres-Quadreny & INA-GRM heavy Bernard Parmegiani.Just the idea that Parmegiani had composed a tape piece using only Sibon-Simonovitch’s virtuoso Ondes Martenot playing was enough to make me sweat; that it ended up being one of his f…
Unusual Sounds: Reflections, The Brain
Augustyn Bloch was a Polish Organist & Composer largely known in these circles for his extended tenure chairing the "Warszawska Jesień," or "Warsaw Autumn" International Festival of Contemporary Music - you've likely come across one of the myriad "Yearly" Polskie Nagrania Muza compilations bearing the names of the Polish late 20th Century Avant Garde's elite - Włodzimierz Kotoński, Bohdan Mazurek, Andrzej Dobrowolski, Zygmunt Krauze, Bogusław Schaeffer, etc.Working comfortably across different d…
Artificial Horizons
Privately pressed on his Sandy Springs-based Horizons label in 1974, this is the sole release of Georgian home-studio Electronic Music maestro Tom Behrens. Hiding behind a glorious op-art sleeve, the music contained here is an inspired blend of noisy, free-synth filigree & the kind of anthemic, rising chord shapes more attuned to something like doom metal than the tried & true "Berlin School" methods which are often the launching-off point.
Aesthetically similar to Lorq Damon's "Journey to the …
Electro-Sonnances
Ever since the Creel-production of Douglas Leedy’s “Entropical Paradise,” I’ve been wondering about the existence of any other “Automatic Electronic Music” released during the “Classic Era.” Lo & behold, Mr. P.C. C.P. has unearthed this “Private-ly” released chestnut from 1980, covering four of obscure Belgian composer Arnold Aard’s experiments with self-generating electronic music systems. The results fall somewhere between Leedy’s elegant side-long tonality studies & the oddly miscreantic cree…
Sky-Sails+
While we're knocking off personal Holy Grail titles, here's an absolute corker; Ann Southam's 1973 Electronic Realization of the poet sean o huigin's "Sky-Sails." A continuous melding of o huigin's recitation against a coterie of keening, upper-register tweeter-zap electronics - theoretically largely c/o the Moog equipment installed in the University of Toronto's UTEMS - this floats on atonal clusters before erupting into "Persona" -esque thunderclaps of Ring-Modulated & Envelope-Followed voice …
Interpreta Obras • Musica Electroacústica
Issued in 1982 as a pair of separate lp’s by Hemis Ferio, this set covers the bulk of Spanish composer Andrés Lewin Richter’s Electro-Acoustic music (as opposed to his Library work - issued by Cam as a one-two-three punch of masterful mood-pieces under the “Space Electronics” moniker in 1977) segregated by his work with vocalist Anna Ricci (the first LP) and without (the second.)Incorporating a wide range of source materials (aside from Ricci’s operatic & at times psychedelic splendour, we’re tr…
18 Days
The Brussels-based Igloo label was one of the main hotbeds of Belgian Avant-Garde music in the late 70s & early 80s, issuing canonic work(s) by Godfried Willem Raes (& his Logos Duo w/ Moniek Darge), Jacques Bekaert, Henri Chopin, Léo Küpper, Artur Petronio, Henri Pousseur, and many others, including this slept-on set by electronic music composer Andre Stordeur (whose only other issued work prior to this were a pair of pieces used to score a 1973 documentary on the artist Gordon Matta-Clark) exe…
l'Envol / Ambitus
Perfectly timed replication of the other - ref: “Kosmos,” issued 30 or so ‘Pones back - great André Almuró LP, initially issued by the oft-cited Boîte a Musique - aka Disques Bam or just BAM - imprint at the tail-end of the 1960s.Almuró started out with Pierre Schaeffer, producing radio plays for the Club D’Essai in the late 40s before joining the GRM in 1958. He proceeded to produce dark, chilling Musique Concrète backings to recitations of work by authors such as Jean Genet & Antonin Artaud, b…
Kosmos : Musiques Expérimentales
Creel Pone here kicking off the 2007 season with a reproduction of this ludicrously hard-to-find 1969 LP on the Ades label containing four pieces composed at the tail-end of the Psychedelic era by Artaud / Breton / Genet collaborator and Pierre Schaeffer student André Almuró. This music has been whispered about in closed circles for close to 40 years yet seldom heard - it’s some of the finest Musique Concrète in the “Underwater Vibrations” category: tons of mutated / processed percussion-sound…