Jo Kondo

A masterpiece album released in 1976 by the Japanese contemporary musician Yuzuru Kondo, whose main contributions to the sombre labyrinths of post-1960s musical modernism is something that the composer conceptualised as 'linear music' (or line and shadow as "Sen no ongaku' is sometimes translated).  Then there's beautiful piano solo puzzle "Sight Rhythmics" that's a bit like Messiaen's total serialist one-off “Mode de valeurs et d'intensités". Plus semi-concrète essay "Summer Days" where muffled speech and noises of cicadas are mixed with Mozart clarinet tune played in Eliane Radigue tempo. This blends nicely with the garden routines. The title piece, Mr. Bloomfield, His Spacing, is a string quartet of violin, viola, and cello that implements the rules of "Music of Lines," released the same year, in a different manner, with fragments of ascending and descending sustained sounds interspersed with the strikes of cowbells. Summer Days is a music concoction of clarinet durations layered over tape edits of insect and bird sounds, children's voices, chatter, and electronic sounds. Walk was composed for flute and piano, and is the basic form of Jo Kondo's philosophy. Highly recommended.