Four Principles On Ireland And Other Pieces (1974)
(Ampersand - ampere07) CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
2001 CD reissue of all of the piano music Cardew wrote in the early ’70s, originally released on LP by Cramps in 1975, when the Scratch Orchestra was questioning its relevance. “Red Flag Prelude” is a take-off on "O Tanenbaum” enriched with alternate chord progressions. “The Croppy Boy" utilizes a dirge form, rolling chords in the key of G Major, and laments a seventeen-year-old Irish boy (who happened to have close-cropped hair), hanged for his resistance. “Four Principles on Ireland” is a self-contained six-minute work with flights of virtuosity, even with Cardew’s always threadbare, clean musical language: un-Romantic, directness of gesture, nothing opaque or convoluted.
Entire Musical Work of Marcel Duchamp
(Ampersand) Used CD $20.00
Predating the work of John Cage (it was composed in 1913), this radical experimental composition employs chance operations and non-musical sounds. “Erratum Musical” and “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors” were realized by the S.E.M. Ensemble in 1976 (Petr Kotik, alto flute; James Kasprowicz, trombone; William Lyon Lee, celesta; John Bondler, glockenspiel), and was previously released in 1976 on Multhipla Records. S.E.M.’s soft, slow-motion studies bear similarities to Cage, Christian Wolff, and Morton Feldman. Booklet from this 2000 reissue contains notes by Kotik.
CHRISTINA KUBISCH / FABRIZIO PLESSI
Tempo Liquido
(Ampersand) Used CD $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Four-channel ambient sound continues throughout the whole performance. With no sampling possibilities at that time (late 1970s), all of the instruments had to be recorded solo in Kubisch’s studio on a Revox machine (one channel for each instrument, repeated several times in order to create a mega-loop, and the final result was transferred to a four-channel-tape for the performance). The superimposition of the sequences of different durations generated continuous layers of sound with minimal variations: a music that could go on forever... Tempo Liquido was one of her and Plessi’s most complex pieces, mixing life, performance, video images, different projections, and a multi-channel sound system.” With O-card
CHRISTINA KUBISCH / FABRIZIO PLESSI
Two and Two
(Ampersand) Used CD $15.00
Performed in Europe and the United States in the 1970s, Two And Two was a live performance for two performers (Kubisch and Plessi), two video cameramen, a wall of monitors and uncommon objects and instruments. Throughout the performances, people were invited to walk around and observe the live action in real time as close-up images of the performance were projected on video screens and a vibrator, water, swanee whistle, voice, contact microphone on ventilator, prepared alto flute, electronic metronome, waterjet on steeldrum were all amplified. The resulting four pieces on this 1977 recording alternate between heavenly, rhythmically shifting drones and Gamelan-tinged, blistering electronics that sound like distant, corrupted morse code dispatches. The entire album is an organic revelation of the discreet acoustic nature of everyday objects, intensely mechanical, startling and elemental. Reissue. With O-card