Adding to the gathering momentum and focus surrounding the seminal contribution of Cramps records, comes an overwhelmingly beautiful, deluxe, limited edition vinyl reissue of Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza’s towering, 1976 statement, ‘Musica Su Schemi’. Encountering the line-up of Ennio Morricone, Franco Evangelisti, Giovanni Piazza, Egisto Macchi, Antonello Neri, and Giancarlo Schiaffini collectively weaving boundary pushing tapestries of sonority through entirely acoustic means, rooted in the use of conceptual maps - "schemi" - to establish departure points for structured sonic experiments, it stands as one of the most striking statements ever produced within the 1970s European avant-garde scene.

While its tenure was relatively short lived - running for roughly 7 years - few labels have had the impact on the history of experimental music as the Italian imprint Cramps. Beginning in 1973, it produced seminal albums by Giusto Pio, Demetrio Stratos, Juan Hidalgo, Robert Ashley, Walter Marchetti, Cornelius Cardew, Raul Lovisoni / Francesco Messina, John Cage, Derek Bailey, and numerous other luminary figures, almost single-handedly establishing the model for how labels within the field would be navigated for decades to come. Yet, despite its unparalleled importance, the majority of Cramps’ releases remained out of print and nearly impossible to obtain for decades following the label’s demise in 1980. It’s only been recently, via a slow trickle of dedicated reissue initiatives, that the astounding body of work comprised by the label’s catalog has begun to become accessible to new generations of fans.

Considered to be the first experimental composers collective, few projects working within the context of 20th Century European avant-garde music have had the lasting importance and influence of Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza. Formed in Rome during 1964, over its years of activity until its eventual disbanding during the early 1980s, the group included an expanding and contracting cast of remarkable creative voices, including Franco Evangelisti, Ennio Morricone, Egisto Macchi, Walter Branchi, Roland Kayn, Frederic Rzewski, and numerous others. Embracing a radical vision that drew on jazz, serialism, musique concrete, and extended techniques - breaking with the divisions that largely defined the global avant-garde scene of its moment - its members sculpted singular bodies of sonority, formed in the spirit of collaboration, that consciously intervened with entrenched notions of authorship and the way that art was understood to be made. Deeply optimistic - deploying a remarkably open approach to hybridity of source and practice - even today, more than half a century after its founding, the group’s earliest efforts still feel remarkably fresh: a vision of a future which has yet to fully appear. Among the most striking of these is 1976’s ‘Musica Su Schemi’, their fifth full-length outing.

As its cover imagery alludes, ‘Musica Su Schemi’ draws upon one of the more unique devices within Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza’s creative process: the use of chess games to define key parameters of their musical explorations, placing it as a definitive expression of the collective's philosophy of "schematic improvisation", which relied on the use of conceptual maps - "schemi" - to establish departure points for structured sonic experiments. Elegantly direct, the LP comprises the three part work, ‘Schema’, before concluding with the long-form homage to the Italian composer, Giacinto Scelsi, ‘Omaggio A Giacinto Scelsi’.

Taking up the entire first side, before its brief, third movement conclusion at the beginning of the second, ‘Schema’ unfurls as an extended collective improvisation, skirting the line between focused discipline and the potential for unkempt chaos. Wide open - rooted in the group’s profound sensibility for abstraction - each timbral and percussive intervention - drifting tones, squeals, scrapes, clatters, resonances, and so on - hangs within a chasmic sense of space, rigorous structure, compositional control, producing an immersive sonic landscape of striking detail within which the movement and entropy is impossible to anticipate.

Operating with a striking sense of creative counterpoint, and taking up the majority of the second side, ‘Omaggio A Giacinto Scelsi’, likely nods to the composer Giacinto Scelsi’s methodology of composing around a single pitch, which he altered and affected through microtonal oscillations, harmonic allusions, changes in timbre, and dynamics. The resulting piece, similarly utilising "schemi" to establish departure points, is a droning, dense work of stunning scale and scope. Captivating, driven by cycling, repetitive piano lines and moaning brass instruments, each step of the way the gathered voices of Morricone, Evangelisti, Piazza, Macchi, Neri, and Schiaffini sculpt a strange, tense and complex answer to American Minimalism and the works of Riley and Young.

Nearly half a century on from its original release, Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza’s ‘Musica Su Schemi’ remains as singular and affecting as it did the day it was released: groundbreaking, unpredictable, fluid, tense, and an album to which the world is still catching up. It’s a monumental statement for the ages and one of the greatest and most historically important records to emerge from the 1970s European avant-garde scene.