blissblogger
Well-known member
got the obvious ones (silver apples, wild bull), what do people think of the rest? i get the impression they're a bit meh.... specifically is Touch worth getting?
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morton subotnik
- Thread starter blissblogger
- Start date
MiltonParker
Well-known member
Touch is probably the best / most accomplished one overall. The Buchla pushed to its limits. It's all analog but the details are so sharp it foreshadows digital.
Basically if the back cover says Buchla, then buy it: Subotnick mastered that machine. I hear many of the organizational & editing principles of 50's edited musique concrete & electronic music on those records, he'd absorbed that aesthetic and when he was presented with a real-time synth with that abstracted metal plate controller, he knew what to do with it, the Subotnick records sound like they grew out of wild live improvisations. They're obviously sequenced & edited as well, but you can hear him flailing around on that touch surface when you listen, rockin' out...
The big six: Silver Apples, Wild Bull, Touch, Sidewinder (snakey drone record!), 4 Butterflies, Until Spring. Sky of Cloudless Sulfur also has some amazing sounds.
In the 80's he began integrating live instruments & vocals, and I'm not as keen on those pieces. I saw him and Joan LaBarbara play Jacob's Room in the late 80's in Berkeley, fairly pretentious new vocal theatrics. "Return" is a DX7 / sequencer record and it's okay but not great. There are pre-Buchla, early 60's pieces on compilations I have that I should listen to again.
Basically if the back cover says Buchla, then buy it: Subotnick mastered that machine. I hear many of the organizational & editing principles of 50's edited musique concrete & electronic music on those records, he'd absorbed that aesthetic and when he was presented with a real-time synth with that abstracted metal plate controller, he knew what to do with it, the Subotnick records sound like they grew out of wild live improvisations. They're obviously sequenced & edited as well, but you can hear him flailing around on that touch surface when you listen, rockin' out...
The big six: Silver Apples, Wild Bull, Touch, Sidewinder (snakey drone record!), 4 Butterflies, Until Spring. Sky of Cloudless Sulfur also has some amazing sounds.
In the 80's he began integrating live instruments & vocals, and I'm not as keen on those pieces. I saw him and Joan LaBarbara play Jacob's Room in the late 80's in Berkeley, fairly pretentious new vocal theatrics. "Return" is a DX7 / sequencer record and it's okay but not great. There are pre-Buchla, early 60's pieces on compilations I have that I should listen to again.
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blissblogger
Well-known member
thanks!
(i just passed on a copy of Touch -- 8 bucks, really worn n' scuffed though--shall return to the store with some haste now though)
what i did get was Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center with milton babbit, mario davidovsky, bulent arel, alice shield, pril smiley, vladimir ussachevysky -- a Quadradisc which means if i had a quadrophonic system....
$8 also
(i just passed on a copy of Touch -- 8 bucks, really worn n' scuffed though--shall return to the store with some haste now though)
what i did get was Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center with milton babbit, mario davidovsky, bulent arel, alice shield, pril smiley, vladimir ussachevysky -- a Quadradisc which means if i had a quadrophonic system....
$8 also
MiltonParker
Well-known member
I'm usually all for vinyl but you want to hear this one spotless... Mode Records is doing a CD / DVD reissue series with the quad mixes as bonuses on the DVDs...
http://www.mode.com/catalog/097subotnick.html
http://www.mode.com/catalog/132subotnick.html
there's a couple of good pieces on that columbia / princeton record if it's the original release of the New World CD...
http://sonhors.free.fr/kronik/cpemc.htm
(editing post... oops, posted the wrong link, meant to post the 'Pioneers of Electronic Music' CD on CRI, but actually can't find a webpage on that out-of-print compilation anywhere, which is frightening)
http://www.mode.com/catalog/097subotnick.html
http://www.mode.com/catalog/132subotnick.html
there's a couple of good pieces on that columbia / princeton record if it's the original release of the New World CD...
http://sonhors.free.fr/kronik/cpemc.htm
(editing post... oops, posted the wrong link, meant to post the 'Pioneers of Electronic Music' CD on CRI, but actually can't find a webpage on that out-of-print compilation anywhere, which is frightening)
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Do you by any chance know if Silver Apples and/or Wild Bull will be reissued as well? I was about to buy the Wergo cd but if there will be a remaster...MiltonParker said:Mode Records is doing a CD / DVD reissue series
MiltonParker
Well-known member
the Wergo sounds fantastic, it's definitive.
Haven't compared the Wergo release of 'Touch' to the Mode release, but the Mode release includes 'Cloudless Sulfur', so it wins. The Wergo tacks on 'Jacob's Room', a brutal comedown.
Haven't compared the Wergo release of 'Touch' to the Mode release, but the Mode release includes 'Cloudless Sulfur', so it wins. The Wergo tacks on 'Jacob's Room', a brutal comedown.