condition (records/cover): NM / EX-

Gatefold sleeve.

A fifty-foot length of taut wire passes through the poles of a large magnet, driven by a sine-wave oscillator at four different frequencies; the wire's vibrations are miked at each end and broadcast in stereo. The result is not the low drone the setup might suggest but a continuously shifting complex of beating harmonics, sidebands and acoustic anomalies particular to the room. Alvin Lucier developed the piece at Wesleyan, where he taught from 1970 until retirement.

These recordings were made on 10 May 1979 in the Rotunda of the U.S. Custom House at Bowling Green in lower Manhattan, where the wire was strung eighty feet across the oval, as part of the "Custom and Culture" exhibition organised by Creative Time and the New York Landmarks Conservancy. Each side of the double LP is a separate twenty-minute realisation at a different oscillator frequency. Howie Weinberg mastered at Masterdisk. Mid-eighties CD reissue on LCD 1011.