By 1969, La Monte Young already had a significant influence on the trajectory of popular music. A guru of drone switched on by the hum of electrical generators and high winds that surrounded his childhood home in rural Idaho, come the early ’60s, Young had relocated to New York, where he founded the experimental performance group Theatre of Eternal Music. Among his players was a young John Cale; shortly after, Cale took up his viola as part of a downtown rock band called the Warlocks, soon to be renamed the Velvet Underground, and the rest is history.

The Theatre’s ’60s recordings have emerged only as bootlegs, so it’s the so-called Black Record—its unofficial name a reference to the calligraphed cover by Young’s wife, collaborator and fellow Theatre member Marian Zazeela—that stands as the earliest official example of Young’s recorded work.