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The Avant-Garde Project

The Avant-Garde project is “a series of recordings of 20th-century classical-experimental-electroacoustic music digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today.”Some wonderful stuff that’s just not available any other way. It’s being released via BitTorrent (though older “releases” are available direct from the project website), and includes some absolute gems which I’ve alwas wanted to hear. Subotnick’s The Double Life of Amphibians, an example of his “ghost electronics” technique; three indeterminate pieces from John Cage; and a set of underwater recordings of “humpback whales, beluga whales, narwhals, orcas, and bearded seals.”Update: The AGP has released several more recordings of particular interest, one of which is “The World of Harry Partch” (AGP 57), which I’ve missed ever since I heard it once at a friend’s house on vinyl. It’s particularly notable for the great (and funny!) performance of “Barstow” with Partch himself as the principle vocalist.

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