ALVIN CURRAN Natural History LP/1983/Musique Concrete/John Cage/Nurse With Wound
  $   35

 


$ 35 Sold For
Apr 14, 2021 Sold Date
Feb 17, 2018 Start Date
1 Number Of Bids
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Description

ALVIN CURRAN 'Natural History' LP (Australia, Black Truffle, Catalogue #BT022) Brand new/unplayed copy of limited year 2016 Black Truffle label first time ever LP edition of 1983 Cassette-only release (originally released in 1983 in Germany on the Edition Giannozzo Berlin label/imprint) of Musique Concrete Field Recordings by Avant-garde sound artist Alvin Curran. 

(NOTE: LIMITED VINYL EDITION!)


Black Truffle present the first-ever vinyl issue of Alvin Curran's Natural History, originally released on cassette by Edition Giannozzo Berlin in 1983. A founding member of the radical electronic improvising group Musica Elettronica Viva, since the early 1970s Curran has developed an idiosyncratic body of solo work that occupies a unique position in the post-Cageian experimental tradition. Singularly undogmatic, Curran's work takes the Cageian experience as the starting point for a radical openness to all forms of music and sound. Refusing to abstract music from its human functions, his work draws on existing musical genres, cutting-edge electronics and environmental recordings to craft compositions that mimic the hazy texture of everyday life, moving from the abstract to the referential, from the observational to the emotive, from the structured to the random. As he reflects in the liner notes written especially for this edition: "This infinite stream of sound became my life and my music all at once". Curran's other classic solo works of the 1970s and 1980s, such as Songs and Views of the Magnetic Garden (1975) and Canti Illuminati (1982) are elaborate collages that combine keyboard and voice improvisation and composition with field-recorded environments. Natural History consists entirely of field recordings from Curran's archive, arranged as a series of "still lifes", sometimes layered, but without any additional processing. Sounds recorded over the course of nearly twenty years, at Curran's home in Rome or while traveling: constructions sites, insects, children's toys, a piano being tuned, foghorns, familiar to admirers of Curran masterful Maritime Rites (2004), lovemaking, a singing neighbor. It is, as Curran says, an attempt to "put the sound of the entire world on a cassette tape". Heard against the backdrop of the increasing prevalence of field recordings in contemporary music over the last few years, Natural History is like a refreshing breeze, suffused with the joy of discovery. Gatefold sleeve with liner notes and photos by Alvin Curran and design by Stephen O'Malley. Vinyl cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates.  

Tracks on this LP are as follows:

  • Natural History Part 1
  • Natural History Part 2

Notes

Mowing the Lawn, Providence RI, ca.1980
Starlings en masse, Lungotevere, Rome, ca. 1980
"Electric Iron" electronic music from a Serge synthesiser, ca. 1980
Cicadas in olive groves, La Serra di Lerici, Italy, early 1970
Maritime Rites ship horn mix, Port of Amsterdam, Bay of La Spezia, 1982
Fireworks Little Italy NYC, Fourth of July 1983
"Jump Rope" children toys - Found by Melissa Gould on Canal St. NYC.
"Tunnel Loops" in Lerici with children calling, 1969
Loon, Burckhardt House, Searsmont Maine, late 1970's
"Open Mix" for Monumenti, Alte Oper Frankfurt, with jump rope toys, 1980
Pile Drivers, World Trade Center, NYC, 1968-69, with children in tunnel
Via St. Elisabetta, Florence - woman singing, Bells of the Duomo, 1968
Rome footsteps at night , dripping toilet and water inside moving train
For Horns at Battery Park NYC, 1982

Large fly caught in a window pane, La Serra di Lerici, 1970
Piano Tuning with dog barking, Rome studio (via Vestri), 1978
Peacock calling - Tuscan farm, hippy collective, 1978
Hoopoe (Upapa bird), Tuscan farm, 1978
Demolition of a building in central Frankfurt, early 1980's
Fog horns with slowly arriving ship, Battery Park, NYC, 1982
Bingo Game in Florence Italy, early 1980's
Small chorus singing unison f/fsharp, Rome 1975
Footsteps with train coupling, Minnesota train yards, 1980
Chorus unison
Train Wheels - Port of Geneva, 1980
Chorus unison, peepers, monoplane landing, dog barking, stream at Harmony Ranch, Connecticut, 1972

Originally released in 1983 as a cassette on Edition Giannozzo, Berlin
Cassette edition produced by [...], Giannozzo Gallery, Berlin

Inner gatefold photos by [...] (photos include the fortress at San Juan Porto Rico,
MEV's Glass Piano, sound installation, Rome 2015, AC in roof garden, 2014, Italy,
Lighthouse and shadow of bird, Lady Elliott Island, Australia, park in central Beijing, Sea Turtle, Culebra Porto Rico, 2013)

Other photos by [...] (Gardening with John sound-installation Orto Botanico Brera, Milano, 2015,
sketches for Rose of Beans 2, Double Rainbow, Via Pascal Rome, Italy, 2012)

Mastered and cut by [...] at D&M, Berlin March 2016

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Record shipped in professional, superior rectangular shaped, corner-protecting corrugated cardboard record mailer with filler pads. Satisfaction guaranteed!


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