Artist : VA
Title : Historische Aufnahmen (Historical Recordings)
Genre : Avantgarde
Year : 2011
Date : 03/2011
Bitrate : VBR kbps
Tracks : 13
Label : Gagarin Records
Source : Vinyl
Encoder : Lame 3.97
Length : 34:19 min
Size : 42,9 MB
Tracklist:
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01.unknown - mechanical-automatic 03:13
speech apparatus
02.unknown - arjaru, finland telephone 01:12
exchange
03.unknown - norwegian whaling 02:12
festival music
04.unknown - maschinery recording 03:02
05.david tudor - unknown piece 01:25
06.unknown - marmara sea plankton 04:03
07.tommy wooden - pig square dance 01:10
08.unknown - pygmy hunting ritual 02:06
09.unknown - demonstration of the 03:08
volkstrautonium
10.velimir chlebnikow - futurist foot 02:11
soldiers
11.unknown - mouvement situationiste 02:25
12.unknown - unidentified tape 02:45
recording
13.kans henny jahnn - untitled 05:27
composition
-------
34:19 min
Amazing album of what are allegedly
important 'lost' recordings spanning
back a century and packaged in a sublime
gatefold sleeve with die cut panelling -
strictly limited copies* Eccentric
avant-garde composer Felix Kubin has
spent the last five years sifting and
selecting this incredible volume of
ancient sonic curios from archives and
personal collections spanning back a
century. Together with attached essay
and extensive sleevenotes, this is an
often surreal portal into the "foreign
country" of the past, preserving for
posterity sounds which may otherwise be
resigned to the scrap heap of history
without the world recognising their
idiosyncratic charms. However, in
similar fashion to Faitiche's Ursula
Bogner recordings, we should say we've
reserved a modicum of doubt as to their
provenance, but when he's crediting them
to heavyweight figures such as David
Tudor, Oskar Sala and even Joseph
Goebbels, replete with extensive
backstories, the situation only becomes
more muddied. The most divisive, and
fantastical of these "recordings" is a
1min 10secs piece of "...atypical
electrical activity on line" captured by
a telephone engineer/voyeur at the
residence of Finnish composer Jean
Sibelius, apparently dated to the same
time he held a sΘance attempting to
contact deceased folk music specialist,
Elias L÷nnrot. It's either spine
chilling or preposterous... we've love
to go with the former. Elsewhere,
there's the personal recording of Joseph
Goebbels, Reich Minister of Public
Enlightenment and Propaganda, dated to
1935, playing Oskar Sala's
Volkstrautonium prototype, plus one of
the very earliest recordings of John
Cage collaborator David Tudor, a 1948
recording of Norwegian Whaling festival
music, the sounds of a Pgymy hunting
ritual in 1934 and just to test your
faith, the sounds of a 7" reel found in
a package post-marked 1918, with
contents dated to 1951 and most likely
produced in the early 1960s - go figure.
Whether it's a beautiful work of sonic
fiction or genuine documentation remains
to be seen, but either way this is
hugely fascinating and beautifully
presented album worthy of your immediate
and long term attention.
http://www.gagarinrecords.com/