Backporch Hillbilly Blues Vol. 2
(Locust) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
Peculiar set of electrified and acoustic bumpkin fiddle howls and screeches from the early to mid-1960s. Sealed but there's a hole drilled in the barcode so we're listing it as used.
Glissando No. 1
(Recorded) CD $16.00 (Out-of-stock)
A trance-tape piece, constituting one of three known examples of the Illuminatory Sound Environment genre (the other two being Catherine Christer Hennix's The Electric Harpsichord (Die Schachtel 2010) and Flynt's upcoming Celestial Power (Quadraphonic Version)). John Berdnt's enthralling liner notes explain ISE as “an unfurling sound field of overwhelming but far from gratuitous sensuality, a highly 'tuned' texture where all of the aspects are coordinated to make a deeply unusual 'whole,' a new kind of perceptual gestalt.... The piece has a disorienting flow that does something strange to 'time.' Its internal structural logic is fascinating but lacks the distraction of an obvious narrative drama—an eternal sound, implying a potentially endless process.... Glissando No. 1 is perhaps the darkest and most feverish expression of the genre, its massed strings and continual timbral transformations covering both a broad audio spectrum and saturating all points in the stereo field with a hallucinogenic and emotive canopy.” Companion track “Stereo Piano” from 1978, performed by Hennix, is also included (her “billowing cloud” piano technique applied to a scale of Flynt’s, subsequently layered by Flynt himself). With sixteen-page booklet. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2011
New American Ethnic Music Volume 1: You are my Everlovin’ + Celestial Power
(Recorded - REC003) 2xCD $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded in 1980 and ’81, this pair of mind-blowing discs deliver flowing, trance-inducing violin solos of extreme beauty and seriousness. In these incredible electronic hillbilly music violin performances, an exalted synthesis of American ethnic music, raga-like lyrical virtuosity, and a deep sensibility takes place — a nod to human culture from the great nihilist philosopher and so-called father of Concept Art. Named as a top ten critics pick for 2001 in The Wire.
New American Ethnic Music Volume 2: Spindizzy
(Recorded - FR006) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
These archival recordings date from 1968 to 1983. Before the publication of his music, Flynt was most known as an often distorted footnote in art history — the man who invented Concept Art — and for his formal attacks on logic and mathematics, often presented in art galleries. He was a composer of the post-Cage school who quickly turned completely against modernist music and created his own genres, primarily through radicalizing Southern musical forms like bluegrass, country, and country blues, and elevating them to an enchanted level, much as Coltrane did with jazz. Flynt’s music is a parallel stream to his extremely distinct and radical philosophy.
New American Ethnic Music Volume 3: Hillbilly Tape Music
(Recorded - REC007) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
The third release in Recorded’s archival series deals with Flynt’s most “electronic” work to date, but the modern-experimental aspects of his work are, as always, in the service of deeply rooted ecstatic hillbilly sensibility. Opens with the startling “Violin Strobe” and contains pieces which verge on kryptonite rockabilly and tranced-out shades of Bo Diddley. Completely essential, breathtaking music from one of the most original and driven musical minds of the century.
New American Ethnic Music Volume 4: Ascent to the Sun
(Recorded - REC021) CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
The final release in the NAEM series (but not the last Henry Flynt on Recorded) is a brilliant, sparkling hillbilly raga in the family of “You Are My Everlovin’ ” but with a unique double violin approach and a mind-bending structure all its own. The piece covers incredible ground in terms of specificity of mood and sentiment, and is deeply listenable and experimental at once. It is a new creation by Flynt circa 2004, engineered by Tim Barnes.