Artist : Alvin Curran
Title : Under The Fig Tree
Genre : Electronic
Year : 2010
Date : 07/2010
Bitrate : VBR kbps
Tracks : 02
Label : Die Schachtel
Source : Vinyl
Encoder : Lame 3.97
Length : 38:58 min
Size : 54,7 MB
Tracklist:
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01.Under The Fig Tree 18:54
02.The Magic Carpet 20:04
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38:58 min
Two masterpieces of the early 70s by
released by Die Schachtel for the first
time ever. Using VCS3 live electronics
and environmental sounds, Alvin Curran
created a hypnotic and meditative
transcendency of minimalist beauty.
Limited deluxe vinyl LP edition.
"The two works presented here are
ôseminalö pieces of two genres from
which a great part of my musical
practice springs and to this day
continues to evolve from. Under the Fig
Tree is in fact the realization of one
monophonic piece contained in my well
known early collection of single line
melodic compositions entitled Music for
every occasion. The version I present
here was originally made for a
performance of trombonist Giancarlo
Schiaffini, playing against the
recording. It is realized by myself
playing a VCS3 (Putney) synthesizer, one
of the first a famous line of portable
electronic synthesizers from the early
70Æs. Notable are electronically
produced timbres which approximate,
acoustic flutes, clarinets, trombones
and tubasà long before the availability
of multi-track tape machines, these
ôtracksö were recorded on multiple Revox
tape recorders and mixed on a custom-
made mixer.
The Magic Carpet is remarkably my first
ôsound installationö long before that
phrase came into our daily vocabularies.
It was inspired by a project of my dear
friend and sculptor Paul Klerr û an
American with Italian-Jewish roots, who
lives in Rome. He had this brilliant
idea to fill a gallery with steel and
gut wires, to which I suggested that he
was actually building a fantastic
musical instrument which could even be
played by the visiting publicà so my
intervention in this spontaneous
collaboration, was to figure out how to
amplify this jungle of long steel wires
û which I did with simple contact
microphone placed at various connecting
points; and further adding a ôverticalö
element of sounding glass chimes plus
aluminum and brass tubing as
occasionally placed metal chimes." Alvin
Currans
www.die-schachtel.com