Altered States III: Crystal World

Young, La Monte, and Zazeela, Marian

The Theatre of Eternal Music

The Theatre of Eternal Music, La Monte called his performing groups.

Young, La Monte

The Second Dream of The High Tension

In recent years, CDs have been released of The Well-Tuned Piano, The Second Dream of The High Tension Line Stepdown Transformer from The Four Dreams of China and, strangest of all, the just intonation raga-blues of Just Stompin’ by The Forever Blues Band.

Ono, Yoko

Onobox

“Performers with contact microphones taped to their bodies hauling heavy objects across the pitch-black stage”, wrote Robert Palmer for his booklet essay accompanying the CD Onobox.

The United States of America

The United States of America

His influence permeates the psychedelia of Joseph Byrd’s rock band, The United States of America, released on CBS in 1968.

The Beatles

White Album

He worked with Yoko Ono, and although most rock critics attribute a Stockhausen influence to the Lennon/Ono tape experiments of The Beatles’ White Album and after, they are far closer to the work of Maxfield.

Prime, Michael

Aquifers

Michael Prime, ecologist and performer of live electronics, sends me his CD – Aquifers – and a manifesto.

Riley, Terry

In C

Pieces such as In C, A Rainbow In Curved Air and Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band were important in their time because they signalled two important changes in the way the worlds of music and commerce worked.

Riley, Terry

A Rainbow In Curved Air

Pieces such as In C, A Rainbow In Curved Air and Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band were important in their time because they signalled two important changes in the way the worlds of music and commerce worked.

Riley, Terry

Persian Surgery Dervishes

With his Persian Surgery Dervishes album, two live solo performances for electric organ and tape delay system recorded in Los Angeles and Paris in 1971/72, Riley became the guru of trance improvisation and meditative music.

Satie, Erik

Vexations

For instance Satie and Vexations.

The Gerry Mulligan Quartet

Gerry Mulligan Quartet

In the early 1950s, Baker had played in the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, a pianoless group with Mulligan playing baritone saxophone, Chico Hamilton on drums and Bob Whitlock on bass.

Dolphy, Eric

Out to Lunch

… his Out To Lunch album is an enduring example of how eclectic interests can be integrated into music which sounds at once utterly familiar yet from another dimension.

Shore, Howard and Coleman, Ornette

Naked Lunch

… Jim Hall and The Contemporary String Quartet on Gunther Schuller’s Variants On a Theme of Thelonious Monk can be instructively compared with the Coleman/Howard Shore soundtrack to David Cronenberg’s film of Naked Lunch (the best thing about the film incidentally).

Coleman, Ornette

Beauty Is a Rare Thing: The Complete Atlantic Recordings

In his booklet notes for Ornette Coleman’s Beauty Is a Rare Thing boxed set of Atlantic recordings, Robert Palmer assesses these early free improvisations as failures.

Baker, Chet

Chet Baker Sings

Despite the style-fixation romanticisation of Baker’s heroin addiction through the 1980s, the still clarity of Chet Baker Sings and Chet Baker & Strings survives.

Ellis, Don

Shock Treatment

Rainbow In Curved Air, recorded in 1968, seemed like a rock record at the time, although CBS also marketed Don Ellis’s big band albums – Shock Treatment and Electric Bath – along with Walter Carlos’s Moog showcase, Switched On Bach, in the same way.