Brainwave Music
([ no label ]) Cassette $7.00
“Each of the three pieces that make up the original LP released by A.R.C. in 1975 integrates biofeedback with musical technology in different ways. In the side-long ‘Portable Gold and Philosophers’ Stones,’ four performers have electrodes and monitoring devices attached to their bodies to receive information about brainwaves, temperature, and galvanic skin response. This information is analyzed and fed into a complex set of frequency dividers and filters, manned by Rosenboom, but essentially played by each of the performers through their psychophysiological responses to the situation. The result is a slowly unfolding web of filtered electronic tones over a tanpura-esque fundamental, possessing the unhurried, stately grandeur of an electronic raga. In ‘Chilean Drought,’ three different variations of a text about a drought in Chile, each read by a different voice in a different style, are associated with the Beta, Alpha, and Theta brainwave bands. Alongside an insistent piano accompaniment, we hear a constantly shifting combination of the three vocal recordings controlled by the relative preponderance of each of the brainwave bands in the soloist whose brainwaves are being monitored. ‘Piano Etude I (Alpha).’ the earliest piece included here, is based on research into the link between Alpha brain wave production and the execution of repetitive motor tasks. As Rosenboom plays a very rapid, incessantly repeated pattern in both hands – deliberately designed to be difficult to execute without being in an alert, non-thinking state similar to that associated with strong Alpha brainwave production – two filters controlled by monitoring his brainwaves process the piano sound, moving gradually higher in frequency as the average Alpha amplitude increases, resulting in a hypnotic, constantly shifting blur of repeated notes reflected through the shimmering, watery lights of the filters. Unofficial facsimile edition reissue
Roundup Two
(Art Into Life - AIL001) 2xCD $26.00 (Out-of-stock)
Live performances with vacuum tube analog computers, solid-state manifestations of chaos and harmony, musical interventions on political tunes, virtuoso performers interlinked with hybrid processing, and more by composer, performer and developer of unique circuitry and software whose labors extend back four decades. Several of these pieces were previously released on cassette (Slowscan Editions 1987), and have been re-mastered; some that were originally presented as excerpts are here complete and unedited. Other works not on the original have been added. An essential, historical document containing important examples from a sixteen-year period in this innovative artist’s extraordinary, pioneering work. Second edition of 300.