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LP
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SR 383LP
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Sub Rosa presents another installment in its Early Electronic series, a silver vinyl reissue of Trevor Wishart's Red Bird: A Political Prisoner's Dream, composed between 1973 and 1977 using the studio of the University of York, and originally released in 1978 by York Electronic Studios. Wishart's compositional interests deal mainly with the interpolation by technological means between the human voice and natural sounds. He has been very active since the early 1970s in the area of electro-acoustic music (first with tape manipulation, later with computer pieces) and music theater pieces. He pays special attention to musical education, collaborative performance projects, and solo practice using original vocal techniques. In 1973 he did his doctoral dissertation at the University of York in musical composition. Since the mid '70s he has been doing systematic research into vocal sounds and speech articulation and the possibilities for their notation and musical organization, giving special emphasis to computer technologies. He is the author of a number of theoretical books on musical composition, philosophy, and sociology and has contributed to the design and implementation of software tools used in the creation of digital music.
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CD
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PD 025CD
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2021 restock Although Machine was completed in 1971, it was not released until 1973, shortly after the release of his Journey Into Space. Machine is therefore the first major composition by Trevor Wishart. It was composed at York University and was originally issued on vinyl as three sides of a highly adventurous 3LP box set called Electronic Music from York, on the University's own record label. In common with Journey Into Space (also on Paradigm Discs), Machine makes use of a large number of volunteer contributors, mostly from the student body at York. With this recording, however, there are no instruments used. Instead, the music of Machine is made up entirely from a combination of spoken text, carefully directed improvising choirs that take their lead from pre-recorded factory sounds. These are extensively mixed and edited with yet more collected machine sounds and other sources of musique concrète, as well as occasional use of basic electronic sources. The scale of this work, and the degree of preparation involved in scoring it, seems to have more resonances with the world of theater or film rather than tape composition. Much of Wishart's early work involved the use of musicians and artists being directed to perform in new ways, outside of their usual remit. A combination of late '60s openness, detailed scores that provide frameworks for improvisation and slavish editing have resulted in an incomparable sound work. With a continuous playing time of one hour, the wild and previously-unexplored terrain covered by this pioneering work of British experimental music moves in turn through the full range of possible audio landscapes from the oceanic calm of the doldrums to ear-splitting factory mayhem.
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CD
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PD 018CD
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2002 release. York University's music department houses one of the UK's first-ever electronic music studios, and during the early '70s, it was a hotbed of creative activity. Much of the released output from the studio at this time revolved around the work of the dynamic composer Trevor Wishart. Journey Into Space was his first release, composed between 1970 and 1972, and was privately-pressed (shortly before the formation of YES records), as two separate LPs in 1973. (The CD cover amalgamates the two original designs). Along with other early private releases of experimental music in the UK (i.e. the LP of sound poems by Cobbing/Jandl, or the LP of musique concrète by Desmond Leslie), this record is also a total anomaly in the canon of British experimental music and has little to do with the current, or even subsequent work by Wishart. The vast length of this piece has many different styles. There are acoustic sections, mostly of junk and toys (bike bells, squeeze horns, bottles, metal tubes, combs, etc.) as well as flute and brass sections that are used as raw material. There are also sections of everyday field recordings, scraps of NASA Apollo transmissions, as well as plenty of multitracking, editing, vocal acrobatics and musique concrète. Among the 48 participants credited on the original sleeve are a whole roster of York University alumni including nearly all the artists who were showcased on the soon-to-be released 3LP box set Electronic Music from York, along with other noteworthy students as diverse as Steve Beresford, Jonty Harrison, Roger Marsh, Dominic Muldowney, Bernard Rands and Jan Steele. The co-operative spirit of York's music and drama departments, plus the raw enthusiasm and open attitude of the participants involved in the project gave this music an immediacy, similar to the later LAFMS scene.
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