Various (Alvins Curran & Lucier plus loads of other avant-people) - Source Records 1-6 Music of the Avant Garde, 1968-1971

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5...according to our Brett on Wed 11 Feb, 2009.

Hoho, this is meaty meaty meaty. Pogus have put out a triple CD set of the music originally contained on the 10"s that went out with the Source music journal in the late sixties and early seventies and they've packaged it up in one of those double jewel cases that your mum's probably got The White Album in. I suppose I should say that it's called Source Records 1-6, 1967-1973. Expect drones, primitive electronics, Radiophonic Workshop-style sound experiments, field recordings, found sounds etc. from various avant-garde people including Alvin Curran and Alvin Lucier. This stuff has really come into fashion in the 'underground' music of the last few years and it's pretty remarkable how modern this stuff now sounds through that recontextualisation.. There's some seriously challenging noise on here that all but the most abrasive artists of today would be more than proud of - I love the idea of dopey hippies chancing across Robert Ashley's 'The Wolfman' somewhere and having their acid-addled brains stung to death by the swarm of pissed-up atomic war wasps it harbours. Sadly I don't have time to go through all three discs but it all looks like hugely interesting and entertaining stuff for those of us who like to cultivate a little beard from time to time. Incidentally, check out the torrents on The Avant Garde Project if this sort of thing is up your street, there's some incredible stuff on there!

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Pogus is extremely proud to reissue the recordings included in the seminal new music journal, Source: Music of the Avant Garde, Vols. 1-6, Issues 1-11, Source Records 1-6, 1967-1973. The original six ten-inch LP Source Records contained some of the most important experimental music of the nineteen-sixties to mid nineteen-seventies and they have now been reissued as a 3 CD set. Source ended publication in 1973, having published, since 1967, contemporary musical materials, scores, articles, interviews, photo essays and recordings over seven years, with up to 2000 subscribers to the semiannual journal: the subscribers avidly anticipated receiving two new and critically acclaimed issues each year during that period.

Most of the original tape masters for the records, after over forty years, have vanished or have seriously deteriorated; hence, we have carefully transferred, noise-reduced, and crackle-removed all the actual LP record tracks to the digital medium, then mastered to the compact disc format for this reissue: the result is an authentic recreation of the original LP, characteristic sound.

CD One - Source Records 1 and 2
Robert Ashley, The Wolfman;
David Behrman, Wave Train;
Larry Austin, Accidents;
Allan Bryant, Pitch Out

CD Two - Source Records 3 and 4
Alvin Lucier, I am sitting in a room;
Arthur Woodbury, Velox;
Mark Riener, Phlegethon;
Larry Austin, Caritas;
Stanley Lunetta, moosack machine

CD Three - Source Records 5 and 6
Lowell Cross, Video II (B)/(C)/(L);
Arrigo Lora-Totino, english phonemes;
Alvin Curran, Magic Carpet;
Annea Lockwood, Tiger Balm