Dockstader, Todd / James Reichert - Omniphony 1 (Mega Blowout Sale)
SKU
RER TODD1
"The finest composer who ever worked in the medium of sounds assembled on tape"-OP
"The legendary collaboration between a leading American Musique Concrete composer and an instrumental ensemble directed by James Reichert where, for I think the first and to date only time, there was full integration of the written, played and manipulated sounds. The instrumental parts were derived from 'cells' of concrete sound and in turn were electronically transformed (in Robert Moog's then state of the art studio). Then the whole mass of material was organised together. A true hybrid, and a one-off.
Long out of print since it's appearance on vinyl in 1966. With two extra pieces by Tod Dockstader; a new stereo version of No.7 (from the 1961's '8 Electronic Pieces' and very late and very different - piece from 1990 which has never escaped his studio until now. A classic and a milestone in the evolution of electronic, mediated sound."-Chris Cutler
"In the early 1960's Tod Dockstader was a young maverick composer of electronic 'organised sound', and James Reichert a film composer and music supervisor. They met in New York in 1963, and launched one of the most extraordinary collaborations in modern music, a unique attempt to integrate electronic sounds and the classical orchestra.
Unlike Varese's Deserts, and Stockhausen's Kontakte, it does not merely have the orchestra play along with a tape, or even process orchestral sounds live. What makes this project unique is that the orchestra was transformed by electronic processes at a fundamental level, and organically fused with the purely electronic sounds.
Dockstader started by providing taped 'cells', short electronic phrases made up of both purely electronic sounds, and processed recordings of natural sounds. Reichert then composed orchestral music around these cells.
The orchestra was recorded at a session at Gotham Recording studio in New York and next the recordings were taken to Robert Moog's studio, where the composers spent two days running the tapes through his filters and ring modulators, matching the orchestral sounds with the electronic cells. The final edit was done by Reichert, piecing together the processed orchestra and the original cells. The completed work is a bizarre blend of Dockstader's fundamentally intuitive approach to sound, and Reichert's more conservatoire-based feeling for melody and orchestration.
It's not simply an important historical document, but an intriguing and entirely convincing listen; a truly extraordinary combination of electronic and orchestral textures, in which the orchestra seems to have been drenched in Technicolor, and dragged through a cartoon sound studio. The disc contains two other compositions by Tod Dockstader. Study no.7 dates from 1961. Past Prelude dates from 1990."
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