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LA MONTE YOUNG & MARIAN ZAZEELA - 31 VII 69 10:26 - 10:49 PM / 23 VIII 64 2:50:45 - 3:11 AM The Volga Delta

Format: CD Label & Cat.Number: Superior Viaduct SV198 Release Year: 2023 Note: first official re-issue of the mythical "Black Record" from 1969 by the father of DRONE music and his wife, MARIAN ZAZEELA... "Within this music is both the journey and the arrival, each appealing to the other within the context of itself. These deceptively simple methods we might refer to as “drone” are layer up on layer of complex responses to the various stratagems I have highlighted above.." [Lisa Thatcher] Price (incl. 19% VAT): €18.50 More Info La Monte Young was born in Bern, Idaho in 1935. He began his music studies in Los Angeles and later Berkeley, California before relocating to New York City in 1960, where he became a primary influence on Minimalism, the Fluxus movement and performance art through his legendary compositions of extended time durations and the development of just intonation and rational number based tuning systems. With wife and collaborator, artist Marian Zazeela, they would formulate the composite sound environments of the Dream House, which continues to this day. Seeing reissue for the first time since its initial 1969 release, Young and Zazeela's first full-length album is often referred to as "The Black Record" due to Zazeela's stunning cover design, complete with the composer's liner notes in elegant hand-lettered script. Side one was recorded in 1969 (on the date and time indicated by the title) at the gallery of Heiner Friedrich in Munich, where Young and Zazeela premiered their Dream House sound and light installation. Featuring Young and Zazeela's voices against a sine wave drone, the recording is a section of the longer composition Map of 49's Dream the Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery (begun in 1966 as a sub-section of the even larger work The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys, which was begun in 1964 with Young's group The Theatre of Eternal Music). According to Young, the raga-like melodic phrases of his voice were heavily influenced by his future teacher, the Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath. Side two, recorded in Young and Zazeela's NYC studio in 1964, is a section of the longer composition Studies in the Bowed Disc. This composition is an extended, highly abstract noise piece for bowed gong (gifted by sculptor Robert Morris). The liner notes explain that the live performance can be heard at 33 and 1/3 RPM, but may also be played at any slower speed down to 8 and 1/3 RPM for turntables with this capacity. “La Monte Young is the daddy of us all.” — Brian Eno https://www.superiorviaduct.com/products/la-monte-young-marian-zazeela-31-vii-69-10-26-10-49-pm-23-viii-64-2-50-45-3-11-am-the-volga-delta-cd "The father of drone, the man himself. Someting very very special for my lucky readers today. La Monte Thornton Young is an American avant-garde composer, musician, and artist. Young is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer. His works have been included among the most important and radical post-World War II avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary music. Young is especially known for his development of drone music. Both his proto-Fluxus and “minimal” compositions question the nature and definition of music and often stress elements of performance art. He is commonly seen as one of the four most celebrated leaders of the minimalist school, along with Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley, despite having little in common formally with Glass and Reich. In 1962 Young wrote The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer. One of The Four Dreams of China, the piece is based on four pitches, which he later gave as the frequency ratios: 36-35-32-24 (G, C, +C#, D), and limits as to which may be combined with any other. Most of his pieces after this point are based on select pitches, played continuously, and a group of long held pitches to be improvised upon. For The Four Dreams of China Young began to plan the “Dream House”, a light and sound installation where musicians would live and create music twenty-four hours a day. He formed the Theatre of Eternal Music to realize “Dream House” and other pieces. The group initially included Marian Zazeela (who has provided the light work The Ornamental Lightyears Tracery for all performances since 1965), Angus MacLise, and Billy Name. In 1964 the ensemble comprised Young and Zazeela; John Cale and Tony Conrad, a former Harvard mathematics major, and sometimes Terry Riley (voices). Since 1966 the group has seen many permutations and has included Garrett List, Jon Hassell, Alex Dea, and many others, including members of the 60s groups. Young has realized the “Theatre of Eternal Music” only intermittently, as it requires expensive and exceptional demands of rehearsal and mounting time. Most realizations of the piece have long titles, such as The Tortoise Recalling the Drone of the Holy Numbers as they were Revealed in the Dreams of the Whirlwind and the Obsidian Gong, Illuminated by the Sawmill, the Green Sawtooth Ocelot and the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer. His works are often extreme in length, conceived by Young as having no beginning and no end, existing before and after any particular performance. In their daily lives, too, Young and Zazeela practice an extended sleep-waking schedule—with “days” longer than twenty-four hours. Young made The Black Record during this period with Marian Zazeela, his wife. Zazeela also did the cover art for the album. The music is filled with moments of a seamless sudden liftoff from a place of linear accumulation and synthetic realisations, that the listener discovers are organized according to completely different principles. What sounds like a drone is actually a “stack”. The complex organisation of various modalities, musical and other, layered each upon the other, reaching always toward a higher wisdom or science toward which we all stumble. Within this music is both the journey and the arrival, each appealing to the other within the context of itself. These deceptively simple methods we might refer to as “drone” are layer up on layer of complex responses to the various stratagems I have highlighed above. The listening experience has the opportunity to reflect this intensity. In other words, this music is an appeal to the listeners freedom. You ae invited to wander inside its halls and come up with your own arrival. This album is an essential for anyone interested in Avant Garde music. Personally – I adore it!" [Lisa Thatcher]