Sunday 9 February 2020

Robert Ashley ‎– "Wolfman" (Alga Marghen ‎– plana-A 20NMN.048) (2003)

Ok then, who invented Harsh Noise as entertainment?...I thought it was AMM,but turns out Robert Ashley, he of catatonic spoken word operas fame, beat them to it by a couple of years. The track "Wolfman (1964) could have been a early Merzbow out-take!? A fucked up mess of tape,voice and feedback that should have scared the living bejeezuz out of any Beatles fans.
Then he had a go at very early 'Ambient',with his 40 minute long tape collage "The Bottleman". This was the best part of 20 years before his dialogue operas for TV started taking shape.
The the late fifties and early sixties this was an extraordinary glance into an unimaginable musical,or non-musical future.
Now every fucker does this for home entertainment with their Granny on the effects table.

Tracklist:

1.The Fox (1957) electronic music and voice
characters adapted from a folk song by Burl Ives (5:15)

2.The Wolfman (1964) tape, voice and feedback
produced at the University of California at Davis by Composer-Performer Edition
first performed at Charlotte Moorman's "Festival of the Avant-Garde", New York, fall 1964 (18:10)

3.The Wolfman Tape (1964) tape-speed manipulation and mixes of many layers of "found" sounds
used as "sound environment" by Bob James for a jazz improvisation (ESP Records, 1965) (6:01)

4.The Bottleman (1960) tape composition with contact microphones, loudspeaker, vocal and other "found" sounds
composed for a George Manupelli film of the same title; single-projection version (43:30)


3 comments:

rev.b said...

*Doh!* I first heard an excerpt of Wolfman on Bob James' album for ESP-Disk. Thanks for the chance to hear the whole thing.

Alan Burns said...

Yes! The Wolfman remains one of the greatest pure noise tracks ever made, all the more remarkable for its vintage. This one (and Lucier's Bird & Person) are where I really started to understand William Bennett's crediting of Ashley/Lucier as fundamental inspirations on Whitehouse.

واجهات حجر هاشمي said...
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