condition (records/cover): NM / EX-
Gatefold sleeve.
Two long-form solo improvisations on Yamaha YC-45D combo organ with Echoplex tape delay, custom-modified by Riley's engineer Chet Wood for just-intonation tuning. Side AB is Performance One, recorded live 18 April 1971 at the Stebbins Hall, Mills College, Berkeley (sleeve states Los Angeles, label states correctly). Side CD is Performance Two, recorded 24 May 1972 at the Théâtre de la Musique in Paris, the concert organised and recorded by Shandar itself. Producer for Shandar was the experimental filmmaker Bruce Conner.
The two performances use the same modal material but with completely different temperaments: the Berkeley take is dark, slow-building, elegiac; the Paris take brighter, more openly Sufi-derived (Riley had by then been studying with Pandit Pran Nath for several years and was teaching Indian music at Mills). Outer laminated gatefold sleeve. Distribution by Discodis in France. The recording sits alongside La Monte Young / Marian Zazeela's Dream House as the document of what live drone improvisation sounded like in the early-seventies American avant-garde.
