Visions (1980) & Prisms (1985)

A couple more contemporary classical records, each of which has at least one electroacoustic piece. Well, Prisms actually just has a (seriously gorgeous) Ross Harris choral piece with synthesizer drone (and I don't think that really counts), but to make up for it, I've included a bonus Jack Body piece from another record, which is full-on electroacoustic. John Rimmer does the choir with electronic tape thing. Gillian Whitehead and Jenny McLeod represent the two polar opposites of seriousness. Full disclosure, these are all choral music. But by New Zealand composers! And they are gooooood.

I was going to include the New Zealand Composer Edition Vol. 3 - Choral Works -- mainly because it has the pink version of that funky cover, but also because it has works by Jack Body, Gillian Whitehead and more -- but was disappointed by how kind of ye olde fashionde it seemed. But if that one was less than impressive, the record that I lifted the Jack Body bonus track from was appalling, proving that electroacoustic music is a format which gets little respect. This live concert record by the National Youth Choir of New Zealand (which is imaginatively titled 'The National Youth Choir of New Zealand In Concert') features the premier of Jack Body's 'Vox Populi', which was written for the National Youth Choir. As if embarrassed for having performed this gorgeous mixture of choir, electronic and bird sounds, the concert -- and the album -- close with The Rainbow Connection.

These two LPs pop ('Visions' in more way than one: it's a wee bit scratchety at times but not too bad); they do some amazing things with harmonisin' on the inside o' mah brain.

Stoned he was with stones great

O let the fire burn, Hotter the better

Summertime Super-Fun-Pak! NZ Electroacoustic on CD -- Part Two

The final three CDs in the Jack Body-curated 'Electroacoustic Music by New Zealand Composers' series on CD Manu. All of the entries in this series, barring the Kim Dyett album, have covers taken from photographs by Theo Schoon of geothermal curiosities. I've been a bit cheeky here and designed a replacement cover for the Dyett album from the same series of photographs by Schoon.

David Downes - Saltwater (1988-1992)

Five of these eight works were composed as soundtracks to dance pieces, and as such contain more aggressively rhythmic content than the other albums in this series. All were composed when Downes was between the ages of 21-25. ‘Valley Mine’, ‘A Green Piece’ and ‘Saltwater’ use effected field recordings, white-noise wind and other classic and eighties cutting-edge synthesis techniques, but pick up some live-sounding percussion and midi-beats halfway through. If you are hoping for more traditional electroacoustic composition, skip right ahead to ‘Disquiet’, a conversation between what feels like improvisatory digital synthesis and a recording of a housefly buzzing round the room; for me the standout track on the album.

Black Noise 

Kim Dyett - Wallpaper Music (1982-1986)

The title track is not. at. all. what one would expect from a piece called ‘Wallpaper Music’, considering that term’s association with Satie and Eno. Jittery jumpcut sampling and synthesised horns, squeaks and burps, lead into John Cousins-esque spoken-word sections, tape-speed effects, shimmering Eventide crystals and quite lovely live guitar and singing. So maybe it’s wallpapering in the sense of that unintentional collage which one finds along heavily postered walls and bollards. ‘Song Cycle Nocturne’ uses the poems of Hone Tuwhare sung and spoken by soloist Rosalund Solas, with atmospheric electronics often mimicking the birdsong of the kokako, which sounds like traditional instrumentation mimicking electronic music! Very beautiful, very NZ. The final piece, ‘Flute Music’, is entirely constructed from recordings of the composer playing his own, self-carved koauau. Ghostly whistles, fragments of tunes, with little processing other than looping, stereo separating, and delay; much more what Satie and Eno had in mind, I believe. 

Making Small Holes in the Silence

Denis Smalley - Tides (1974-1984)

‘Pentes’ (1974) is, according to whoever wrote the Denis Smalley article on Wikipedia, one of the classics of electroacoustic music. But it's no joke. These are serious, complex soundworlds imagined by a rigorous master of the form. Sophisticated timbres are created from instrumental sounds in the isolation of the synthesiser, and in other sections, snatches of what sound like tapes of orchestral warm-ups mixed with white noise are slowed to a halt. There are also, as in many NZ electroacoustic works (like Dyett's), references to native birdsong, and even (like Downes') to bagpipe music. ‘Tides: Pools and Currents’ is a perfect audio accompaniment to Theo Schoon’s cover photograph of Rotorua mud pools, or an evocation of autochthonous echinoderms and cnidarians in their rocky puddles. Its sequel, ‘Tides: Sea Flight’ is uttered in the same tongue, but describes magnetically shifting immensities, rather than the small and self-contained. ‘Vortex’ jumps around like Dyett’s ‘Wallpaper’, then coalesces into skirling winds and distant chimes. Denis Smalley has been, for me, the greatest discovery from this series. New Zealand born and trained, his award-winning body of work has been entirely electroacoustic, and he deserves more recognition here both for what he has produced musically, and academically through his teaching and articles. 

Invisible Kinetic Sculpture

New Zealand Composer Edition - Chamber Works Vols. 1 & 2 (1972)

Starting off this set, the first track of Vol. 1 is my man John Rimmer, carrying the electroacoustic torch on his 'Composition 2 for Wind Quintet and Electronic Sounds'. When the first quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle barges in from the antique analogues, the cleverly clunky clash belies an eventual merging, which becomes so subtle that I'm sure even the players aren't sure who's making which sound.

David Farquhar is so restlessly inventive, and relentlessly inviting. He skims along the outer guard, never fully abandoning tunefulness. From the liner notes: "Although he does not appear to have been involved to a great extent with electronic music, ... David Farquhar [is] the most versatile of the composers represented on this record..." Here he experiments with a bit of extended technique on the 'Three Pieces' on Vol. 1, and has written new settings of traditional Scots ballads for voice and piano on Vol. 2 (see below, "Lilburn").

Jack Body's 'Turtle Time' is a dramatic, breathless, electroacoustic freak-o-delic mindblower.

'Capriccio for Four Saxophones' by Robert Burch carries a bit of the spirit of New York's Lounge Lizards in parts, and reminds us -- no matter that this is a contemporary classical work -- the history of Jazz is inseparable from the tuning, timbre and physical structure of the saxophone.

Lilburn. My enjoyment of much classical music stalls when it comes to vocal works involving the mannered, affected, clenched-throated warbling of classically trained -- usually male -- soloists. Listening head-tilted, trying hard, with a forced grin, to Lilburn's settings of three poems by JK Baxter, RAK Mason, and Ursula Bethell, my philistine ears can at least hold on to some exciting string-work. Mercifully, on Vol. 2, piano-champ Margaret Nielsen plays on both the extraordinary and deservedly recognisable Sonata for Violin and Piano, and the equally gorgeous Sonatina 2 for Piano.


And First He Played the Notes of Annoy

And Then He Played the Notes of Joy

Springtime Super-Fun-Pak! NZ Electroacoustic on CD

It's Springtime for Electroacoustic Nerds in New Zealand! And there is no better soundtrack for that garden party, barbecue, or kegger than the classic period of NZ academic electroacoustic. These four albums are from a series of six or seven CDs released in 1993 by CD Manu. All feature gorgeous cover photography from Theo Schoon, the Java-born Nederlander whose appropriation of Māori artistic techniques and ham-fisted destruction of historic rock art have left a complicated and controversial impact on the New Zealand visual art world. 

Jack Body - Suara: Environmental Music From Java (1978-1990)

Jack Body was often considered the most accomplished of late 20th century NZ composers, in terms of his national and international standing. His work has remained experimental from the beginning, though not relentlessly intimidating to the public, as shown by his most enduring composition: the theme song to the soap opera 'Close to Home.'  His work never seems to stray from celebrating the beautiful in  sound. Like John Cousins, many of his compositions involve manipulated field recordings and human voice, but rather than devising from these an unsettling alien soundtrack, Body finds lyricism and musicality in his sources.

Balloon Squeaker


John Rimmer - Fleeting Images (1979-1991)

Of the artists in this post, Rimmer was most devoted during this early time period to the integration of electronic and traditional musical instruments. His 'Compositions' series include works for wind quintet and electronic sounds, percussion and electronic sounds, piano and electronic sounds. On this CD of entirely electroacoustic compositions, Rimmer employs analog, digital, and computer synthesis, short-wave radio, percussion, guitar, field recordings and voice. This is a rich and thought-provoking set of experiments by a composer driven by the leading edge of synthesis technology.

Religion Without Science


John Cousins - Sleep Exposure (1979-1986)

John Cousins' work consistently stupefies me. His main instrument is the oldest of all -- the human voice -- but he employs it in a way which is utterly jarring. With a dictaphone, a delay, some filtering and panning, and maybe a few other toys, he creates unsettling non-linear narratives which are almost more like dance or theatre than sound art or music. Funny, frustrating, and plain old f'ed up, these tracks are as fossilic and foreign as this other f-word: fremd. Highly recommended, difficult stuff.

Don't Stop The Tape, Don't Stop The Tape!

Ross Harris - Inner Worlds (1978-1990)

Ross Harris' practice is aligned with Jack Body's in his pursuit of beauty, and through the use of non-Western instrumentation combined with electronic techniques. This CD comes closest of this group to approaching the dreaded designator, 'New Age', but it retains enough tension and complexity to completely disallow for a lazy chill-out. His 1978 track 'Syndrum', included here, deserves to be sampled by a knowing NZ electro producer.

Twilight Fleeting

New Directions in New Zealand Music by NZ Composers - A Festival of NZ Music & Sound Installations (1979)

The last of the fully electroacoustic/experimental compilations from this classic, academic period that I know of, this record was included as part of the catalogue for a 1979 festival held at the National Art Gallery, Wellington.

The festival featured sound installations, cross-discipline collaborations, computer music, live electronics, and 'cross-cultural experiences,' and the catalogue and accompanying record include contributions by Lilburn, Jack Body, John Cousins, Ross Harris, David Farquhar and Brent Carlsson.

A finely curated selection of writing and music, with each piece endeavouring to represent the breadth of the experimental community through the exquisiteness of expression from each of its representative contributions.


The Sun Told Time Without Ticking

Horizons - New Zealand Electronic Music (1977)

The arts in New Zealand's late-arriving modernism were unusually cross-disciplinary. In any minuscule regional arts scene, the best ideas came from sharing across specialties. The pairing of painting and poetry is the most visible (for instance, in the works of McCahon/Caselberg and Hotere/Manhire) but poets also worked with musicians (e.g. Sam Hunt and Mammal), and musicians with painters. 'Horizons' features the grand-daddy of all New Zealand electroacoustic music, Douglas Lilburn, whose lifelong conversation with painter Rita Angus fired his practice, and whose collaboration with poet Alistair Campbell birthed the first major electroacoustic work in New Zealand music history ('The Return', 1965). 

On this LP, John Rimmer's piece 'Where Sea Meets Sky 1' is "a musical image of... Ian Wedde's poem 'Those Others'", and Ross Harris's 'Horizons' was commissioned by synaesthete painter Michael Smither (who also provided the cover painting for Human Instinct's 'Stoned Guitar' LP). 

Jack Body takes it to the (Indonesian) street with 'Musik Dari Jalan', a transportative wedge of ethnomusique concrete. However, it is Rimmer and Harris who are probably the most comfortable with electroacoustic music as their primary medium; the sounds are complex, alien, metal-organic frameworks of crystalline compounds. Lilburn's work here is much more based in classical traditions; 'Carousel,' is lyrical and narrative even amongst its jarring timbres. As proof of his status amongst his peers, 'Musik Dari Jalan' and 'Where Sea Meets Sky 1' are both dedicated to Douglas Lilburn.

There is only a small handful of electroacoustic music available on LP from the 'classic' period of New Zealand's electroacoustic development (1965 - 1985): the 3xLP box set 'New Zealand Electronic Music', the solo LPs 'Soundscape' by Douglas Lilburn, and 'Soundweb' by John Rimmer (if anyone has this one, please let me know), and this compilation. 

So, I'm making a bit of a sharp left turn for awhile here. In future, I will be posting LPs (and the occasional out-of-print CD) of New Zealand modern classical and avant-garde music (some of these records include electroacoustic works amongst works scored for more traditional instrumentation), and possibly New Zealand poetry. This blog has always been about digitising my own collection of NZ vinyl -- if it's not already available digitally, and so that I can have more opportunity to listen to it myself -- and promoting and preserving artefacts of New Zealand's cultural history which do not deserve to remain obscure. 

They Kiss Only In Our Minds