Orpheus Music: The Electronic Music Time Machine

Besides Germany, France and to some extend Sweden, the Netherlands were probably the most active European country in the formation of electronic music (c.1950-80). The Dutch vintage electronic music scene comprises such notable names like Dick Raaijmakers, Ton Bruynèl, Tom Dissevelt (aka Kid Beltran) and the exiled trio Roland Kayn-Konrad Boehmer-Gottfried Michael Koenig (all three originally from Germany, but living in Holland for many years). Jan Boerman, whose complete electronic works we are featuring here today, is probably the most difficult one to find, as his 5CD box originally released on Donemus remains out of print/deleted.

Some basic links to further explore the Dutch electronic music scene:

(1 of 6) http://sharebee.com/ab0d00c2
(2 of 6) http://sharebee.com/271a1955
(3 of 6) http://sharebee.com/f1080294
(4 of 6) http://sharebee.com/c04fcb61
(5 of 6) http://sharebee.com/43befb4b
(6 of 6) http://sharebee.com/9c59b596

NB: This upload took me a week at the nternet caffee and was a major invest of my time and money, and there won't be any other larger posts like this - especially given the unfortunate fact that, judged from the lack of comments to previous posts, I'm doing it for a bunch of "hit and run" freeriders who failed to understand the basic ideas of interactive web 2.0.

Yep, this early piece for two-channel tape has indeed been electronically created by American maverick "minimal" composer John Adams, whom you may know from such chartbusters as Harmonium or Nixon in China. Here, Adams indulges in a heavy metal oscillator/tape feast. I found this rare (and yet unpublished?) tape blast as audio stream on on www.archive.org (courtesy of www.radiom.org) and recorded it 1:1 by using Replay Media Catcher.

NB: The Klaus Schulze & Thomas Hamilton links are finally up (still owe you the Steve Reich & Frank Zappa ones). Sorry for my slow release schedule, I recently had to switch from University super LAN to dial up. Each upload takes several hours and this way it's really no fun continuing this blog.

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Notoriously hyperactive Frank Zappa has left his footprints in a whole bunch of musical styles, be it Contemporary Classical, Jazz, Blues, and even Pop. This generic Orpheus Music release (put together by myself) pays tribute to Zappa's relatively uncommon journeys into electronic music/musique concrete. As I'm not a Zappa expert I'm sure I've missed some of his electronic oeuvre. Anyway, Reel Zappa (glad I found this matching pic) is an invitation to explore some of his electronic endeavours, and should not be mistaken as a complete and properly curated anthology. Sources: The first two tracks have been taken from two common albums (Freak Out & Weasals Ripped My Flesh), the third is an unreleased studio (?) bootleg that appeared on an unknown music blog a while ago (sorry that I can't properly credit the author as I forgot from where I downloaded it - was hidden inside a 300MB chunk of Zappa bootlegs).

I've added the sensationally rare tape beast My Name Is as performed 1970 in Berkeley (original source: web stream on http://www.archive.org/ courtesy of http://www.radiom.org/ - I've used Replay Media Catcher to record the audio stream 1:1 to MP3). I never thought I would ever be able to listen to this track as it lis isted as "manuscript only" in Reich's official list of works. It's a little bit too casual for my taste but it definitely has its moments as its speech samples were recorded and transformed live in concert.

Also added, from the same session in Berkeley, are two unusual performances of Violin Phase and Phase Patterns. Technically speaking these two bonus tracks are not "lost" pieces as you can find them on regular ECM/Wergo releases, but these previously unreleased performances are interesting and historically important nonetheless.

This generic release (which is assembled from several sources and not commercially available) unearthes some "lost" pieces by fabulous American "minimalist" Steve Reich. 1st Piece: Melodica is Reich's legendary "lost" tape piece from 1966, featuring heavy tape phasing for, yes, a melodica. It has only been released on the 3 LP release Music from Mills - which, in my opinion, is justified, as it is certainly not among Reich's better works. The second piece, Reed Phase (1967), though being available on CD (Ulrich Krieger: Walls of Sound II) is, surprisingly, not part of Reich's official work list (the reasons for which are not known to me). The third piece is the DVD-audio track from Act I: Hindenburg from Reich's video opera Three Tales (released 2002). Ulrich Krieger's heavy version of Pendulum Music from 1968 is added as bonus track.
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