David Cope

  Issued ‘privately’ (via his own Discant Records, the label’s sole release) in 1971, this was the recorded debut of composer David Cope, consisting of two side-length pieces for live instruments, demonic loud-whisper vocals, and analog electronic processing (according to the liner notes, Cope played back “early tapes of his own works, altered through a Moog synthesizer at the Electronic Studio of the Cleveland Institute of Music.”)
What’s immediately noticeable is that these pieces really don’t sound like any other one thing, merging a cyclic, at-times sea-sick sensibility (the loping piano figure & pointillist lid-smash antics of the tail-end of the second piece lend a woozy air) with the kind(s) of Hör-spiel & avant-cabaret-leanings Robert Ashley would explore in the coming years (of note ; “K” is symbolically linked with a Samuel Beckett play, which gives some indication of the conceptual frameworks at play herein.). Grey lalbels edition.