Unseen Worlds is back with a true stunner, diving into the shadows of 1970s minimalism, with John McGuire’s “Pulse Music”, a brilliant double LP that collects the four works in the American composer's "Pulse Series" together for the first time. Hypnotic and complex, while remaining remarkably approachable, these three electronic works and one orchestral composition interweave startling arrangements of tonal arpeggiations and cycles, rewriting the book on how music from this period has been historically perceived.

Since their launch in the mid-2000s, the New York based imprint, Unseen Worlds, has continued to set an incredibly high bar through the earth-shaking quality of its releases. Equally dedicated to the artefacts of history and the contemporary, they’ve always taken their time, issuing each release with remarkable care, while humbly delivering tectonic shifts in the landscape of sounds. Their latest, the American composer John McGuire’s “Pulse Music” takes a deep dive into some of the most brilliant, lesser known depths of minimalist music from the 1970s. Comprising McGuire’s Pulse Music series together for the first time, these four works, composed between 1975 and 1979, incorporate a vast sonorous canvas and blur long-standing notions of Minimalism’s reaction against European modernism.

Born in California in 1942, John McGuire is a fascinating figure in late 20th century music. Following his undergraduate studies at Occidental College in Los Angeles, he spent a considerable amount of the second half of the 1960s in Europe studying under Krzysztof Penderecki and Karlheinz Stockhausen, before moving to the continent in 1970. It was during this period, first based in Utrecht and then in different parts of Germany, that he began composing many of the works for which he would become most well known, conforming “serialism’s warped geometries onto an evenly spaced grid, perfectly preserving serial music’s multi-dimensionality while smoothing its wildest disjunctures and sharpest angles.” Among these are notably “48 Variations, for 2 pianos”, released as his debut LP by Largo a decade or so later in 1987, as well as “Frieze For Four Pianos” and his “Pulse Music III”, which would make up his follow up, issued by Edition Michael Frauenlob Bauer later that same year.

Fascinatingly, while McGuire’s “Pulse Series” - made up of “Pulse Music I", “Pulse Music II", “Pulse Music III”, and “108 Pulses” - stand among his most striking and groundbreaking works from this period, only “Pulse Music III” and “Pulse Music I” have seen a recorded release until now, and the latter only appeared on the obscure “25 Jahre Feedback Studio” CD compilation in 1996. Composed between 1975 and 1979, each of the works was initially realized electronically, in the newly built Studio for Electronic Music at the State University of Cologne and WDR, but “Pulse Music II” ultimately came to its final form by being adapted by the composer for orchestra as a commission for Hans Otte for his Pro Musica Nova festival at Radio Bremen, with four pianists - Christoph Delz, Herbert Henck, Deborah Richards, Doris Thomsen - and McGuire playing a series of twelve drone-like chords on the organ, alongside the orchestra, conducted by Klaus Bernbacher.

Of the four works in the series, all but “Pulse Music II” are effectively too demanding in their speed, carefully calibrated tempo changes, and precision for live musicians. “Pulse Music I", “Pulse Music III”, and “108 Pulses” each represent stunning gestures of complex minimalism, beginning to evolve during the second half of the 1970s, with multiple overlayed tempos and durations of tones sculpting remarkable patterns of arpeggiation and cycles; each layer of pulses made distinct by its own timbre, register, and tempo.

The outcome in every case is hypnotic and captivating, presenting a form of minimalism with a daunting sense of complexity - pushing the ground pioneered by Reich, Riley, and Glass to new limits - while remaining remarkably seductive and approachable.

With the original handful of releases of McGuire’s having become scarce and generally known by only a small number of devotees, Unseen Worlds’ release of “Pulse Music” represents an absolute revelation, opening a much-needed door on a crucial figure in the second wave of American Minimalism. Gathering these works - all recorded during the rough period that they were composed - together for the first time, and releasing some for the first time, it’s a truly thrilling dive into some of the best archival music we’ve heard in the last year.