EMC104. Christopher Hobbs Sudoku Music.

1. Chris's new double CD.  We've gone on about this elsewhere (see link above and for Chris's MySpace and the EMC Blog).  So you know what to do if you want it. 
   

2. Chris Hobbs has been obsessed for the last two years with Sudokus - the addictive puzzle game that's taken over most newspapers' games pages, especially here in Britain.  Chris was especially interested in the hexadecimal (16 x 16) letter-and-number game known in the Independent newspaper as 'super', and in other places as 'mega' sudoku.
   

3. But rather than just sitting around wasting his time playing these sudokus, Hobbs, one of the pioneers of British minimalism known as systems music, decided to use the results to generate pieces.  Hence Sudoku Music.
   

4. Chris has set these sudoku pieces using the Apple program Garageband, its basic home electronic music application.  You may have heard some of these loops in television programmes before.  Chris's use of Apple's basic program (rather than their more professional Logic Pro is part of his ethic as a postmodern experimental composer, in which great music can be made on cheap and cheerful sound sources. 
   

5. Now, Chris has recorded Sudoku Music on a double CD - two hours of Sodoku-derived systems pieces (ten in all).  Sudoku Music includes these ripping titles:
   

6. Sudoku 21 (8.35)
   

7. Sudoku 14 (13:49)
   

8. Sudoku 10 (18:21)
   

9. Sudoku 34 (15:48)
   

10. The Power (10:12)
    

11. Sudoku 5 (17:38)
    

12. Sudoku 33 (16:16)
    

13. Sudoku 8 (7:26)
    

14. Sudoku 35 (8:46)
    

15. Sudoku 32 (13:37)
    

16. We've put a few samples on our Blog Pages -'Other Types of Music'.  Soon you, too, will know them as 'the one with the drums', 'the one with the bells', 'the piano one', and so on.  Just like Friends!  Yours for £10 + p & p.
    

17. Bop 'til you drop with Sudoku Music!
    

18. Every home should have Sudoku music!
    

19. Don't leave home without Sudoku music!
    

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BR0034. Dave Smith.  Dave Smith plays Smith.

1. Dave Smith has been writing groups of pieces and individual pieces for piano to fit an entire concert for some years.  He calls this sort of music Piano Concerts.  His first Piano Concert is a series of pieces meditating on Latin American and other popular styles.  Several of these appear on this recording.  There's also his On the virtues of flowers and other cool stuff.  If you like postmodern British experimental piano music, then this is a fine addition to any collection.  You might want to read more about Dave's Piano Concerts on the EMC Blog.  £10 plus p & p.
   

EMC103. Erik Satie. Le fils de étoiles.

1. CD recording by Christopher Hobbs of Satie's longest piece.  Liner notes by the esteemed Satie scholar Robert Orledge.  In 1989 Chris did the first performance of this piece in its entirety (the three Preludes which begin each act are well known and often played) for London Hall recordings.  Since then, Chris has made a critical edition of this work (available as PN0031 here at the EMC) and it is this edition which informs the performance on the CD.  Have you ever wished that Satie's music would go on forever?  Well, this one does, for a little longer than an hour of statuesque beauty.  £10 + p & p.  The score is on sale for £12.50 and the CD for £10 but if you order both together we will give you a £2.50 discount. For more details contact us at questions**experimentalmusic.co.uk (for **, substitute @ ).
   

BR0033.  Walter and Horace Cardew, Stephen Moore.  Chioma Sings Tales of Danny Dark.

1. CD recording: music by Horace and Walter Cardew and Stephen Moore, lyrics by Stephen Moore.  Musicians: Laura Pooley, soprano voice; Dai Pritchard, woodwinds and trumpet; Horace Cardew, tenor saxophone and clarinets; Mick Foster, baritone saxophone and clarinets; Walter Cardew, guitar and percussion; Matthew Dungey, keyboards and voice.  The authors explain this recording as follows:
   

2. 'Chioma Sings Tales of Danny Dark' is a suite of pieces describing a story of loss - the inescapable loss of innocence. Danny Dark's world is uncompromising; it offers few chances to escape. When it does these chances must be seized without turning back or are forever lost. His world is harsh and hopeless, but true. The songs are based around real events, although the language is sometimes surreal. The compositions are mostly constructed using a collage technique - texture added, bits bolted on here and there, mixing improvisation, composition, electronics and acoustic instruments.
   

3. Really nice sound quality; professionally produced.  We like it, especially the price, which the Cardews asked us to set!  £7 + p & p.
   

BR0032.  Paul Dunmall and Bruce Coates.  19 Years Later.

1. CD improvisation by these two British free improvisation players.  The nineteen years in the title is the length of time since the last time the players worked together (there's a lovely picture inside of Paul Dunmall and our mate Bruce playing then - and Bruce was only 13!).  This time they've chosen soprano saxes for the two pieces on the CD.  High and pretty - great for those Steve Lacy and Lol Coxhill fans out there.  £10 + p & p.
   

EMC102. Promenade Theatre Orchestra. The Orangery: October 1 1972.

1. ‘The Promenade Theatre Orchestra's version of Carolina Moon is proving a hit with the man in the street’ (John Walters, The Guardian).
   

2. This archive recording is launched in honour of the concert's thirtieth anniversary, by the legendary PTO.  The PTO was a group comprising John White, Chris Hobbs, Hugh Shrapnel, and Alec Hill: all composers and performers who wrote fine, funny systemic music for reed organs and toy pianos (although they also wrote for wind instruments and percussion).  The Orangery Concert was the last by the PTO in Britain and shows the Orchestra at the height of its powers.  Julian Cowley said in The Wire (February 2003):
   

3. Inspired by Erik Satie's graceful and funny deflation of grandiosity, the percussive glow of Balinese gamelan and, closer to home, the tradition of change-ringing with handbells, their compositions were unassuming and direct in their appeal, yet infused with a quirky charm that still holds the attention 30 years on.
   

4. This CD was recorded by Bryn Harris, who provides a cool account of the recording and of his mastering (in conjunction with Music Now) from the original tape.  Includes short notes by all the composer/performers.  £10 + p & p.  For more information, see Who Are the PTO?
   

BR0027. Michael Parsons.  Piano Music 1977-96.

1. We are pleased to re-issue Michael Parsons' Piano Music 1977-1996, a comprehensive collection of pieces performed by the composer. They exhibit the typical qualities of his music; economy of material, clarity of structure and an objective approach to the actualities of sound and performance. This is an important document in British Experimental Music, and EMC are proud to be able to distribute it.  £10 + p & p.
   

EMC101.  Christopher Hobbs. Fifty in Two Thousand.

1. The first of EMC's own recordings, Fifty in Two Thousand is a 75-minute systemic piece for piano, prepared piano, electronic keyboard and percussion, coming to you in plain EMC purple livery.  £10 p & p.
   

2. Julian Cowley in Wire Magazine said:
   

3. Far from the ‘forbidding, hermetic’ piece implied by his commentary, this quietly alluring music possesses the seemingly incidental beauty that can arise in music composed under self-enforced constraints.  It does lean, as Hobbs remarks, ‘toward the meditative and uneventful’, but the games it plays with time are constantly diverting.  The electronic keyboard sounds at one moment like chiming clocks, at others like a giant toy piano.  The percussion rings out potentially interminable patterns.  The piano lilts and muses, illuminated by the glow of decaying notes.  These elements are dovetailed expertly, following those preconceived procedures, and by the piece's end another potential hour and a quarter has taken on its singular shape.
   

4. John Walters wrote in The Guardian:
   

5. English experimental music has been simmering away quietly for more than three decades. The movement, which is associated with characters such as John Tilbury and Cornelius Cardew, plus many offshoots such as the Portsmouth Sinfonia, was enshrined in Michael Nyman's 1974 book, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. What emerged tended to involve non-musicians and professional players working together, a more democratic relationship with the audience and messy happenstance.
   

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7. And though the music is avant garde, with a stubborn streak, it is rarely ugly. It has a take-it-or-leave-it quality, both unsettling and calming; its influence upon ambient music has been enormous. Many of the experimentalists have continued in their subversive, gentlemanly way: John White, Howard Skempton, Michael Parsons, Gavin Bryars and Dr Christopher Hobbs, who has just released Fifty in Two Thousand (Experimental Music Catalogue). Hobbs was the teenage student who studied with Cardew and played with AMM, the Scratch Orchestra and the Promenade Theatre Orchestra (PTO). The PTO made music on toy pianos, reed organs and small percussion - a flyer once boasted: ‘NO noisy electronics... All musical material guaranteed through-composed. NO hit-or-miss improvisation’.
   

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9. Fifty in Two Thousand is a 75-minute epic comprising 50 sections of equal duration, scored for five different combinations of two instruments - all played live by Hobbs. The work moves between quiet repetitive phrases for prepared piano and percussion to busy, Gamelan-like motifs for piano and digital synthesizer. The timbres are seductive and easy on the ear; the music's presentation in 90-second chunks means that ‘the listener never has to deal with one kind of material for too long’ as Hobbs writes in his liner note.
   

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11. It is not to be mistaken for meandering, quasi-improvised chilling; the rigour of Hobbs's compositional approach gives the piece substance and purpose, and an arithmetical structure you find in the best work of Peter Greenaway and Louis Andriessen.
    

BR0024.  Cornelius Cardew Memorial Concert.

1. The original LP of the concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, 16 May 1982.  Impetus records, IMP28204, 1985.  The EMC has received a very, very limited number of these now-rare LPs.  This historic recordings features many of Cardews colleagues and friends (the performer list reads like a Who's Who of British experimental music) performing many of his greatest works: Treatise, Paragraph 1 of The Great Learning, ‘The Turtledove’ from 3 Bourgeois Songs, Thälmann Variations, Croppy Boy, and We Sing For the Future (take note that we have scores for some of these pieces: see the EMC Catalogue.  We've only got 8 left, and once they're gone, they're gone.  £30 + p & p.
   

BR0004. Virginia Anderson. British Experimental Music: Cornelius Cardew and His Contemporaries.

1. 1983: thesis, 287 pp. Facsimile of the original typescript thesis, comb-bound. £20 + p & p.
   

2. A well-regarded and much-cited history of the classic years of experimentalism.  The original was the most popular interlibrary loan item from the University of Redlands until it was stolen in the early 1990s and the current facsimile is proving equally popular. An interesting and valuable companion piece to Michael Nyman's Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond.
   

3. So popular that it's gone!  Coming soon, Virginia Anderson, Experimental Music in Britain.  Here’s a mocked-up title page.  It won’t end up like this, but hey, what the heck....
   

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