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LP
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BT 082LP
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Black Truffle announce ViewFinder / Hide & Seek, a new release from acclaimed American experimental composer David Behrman, presenting recordings made in collaboration with Jon Gibson and Werner Durand between 1989 and 2020. Last heard from on Black Truffle as part of the collaborative art song/live electronics madness of She's More Wild (BT 059LP), these recordings find Behrman continuing the pioneering work in interactive electronics that have established him as one of the major living experimental composers. Side A presents excerpts from two live realizations of "Unforeseen Events" (1989), the fourth in a series of pieces focusing on the interactions between instrumental performers and responsive software. Like the classic earlier works in the series, On the Other Ocean (1977), Interspecies Smalltalk (1984) and Leapday Night (1986), "Unforeseen Events" is an "unfinished composition" in which a computer system listens for and responds to specific pitch cues from an instrumentalist. Performed by the composer on electronics and Werner Durand on soprano saxophone in Berlin in 1989, the first realization immediately ushers the listener into an environment of long soprano notes, lush, sustained synth harmonies, randomized percussive interjections and distantly burbling arpeggiated patterns. The 1999 realization recorded in New York with Jon Gibson on soprano shows how much room for the instrumentalist to affect the course of the music exists in Behrman's interactive pieces, in which, as he notes, "performers have options rather than instructions". Beginning in a roughly similar area to the version with Durand, this later recording eventually becomes substantially more active, as polyrhythmically layered arpeggios and percussive patterns respond to fast chromatic lines and dynamic phrases from the saxophone, moving Gibson in turn to respond with cycling figures and moments of extended technique that touch on the soprano languages pioneered by players like Steve Lacy and Evan Parker. On the B side, you are treated to a new collaborative work from Behrman and Werner Durand, building on the 2002 installation work "ViewFinder", in which a camera detecting physical motion triggered changes to electronic sound. The piece presented here is a long-distance studio construction, recorded by Behrman in the Hudson Valley and Durand in Berlin, offering up an expansive duet between Behrman's lush, gliding synth tones and the alien, untempered tones of Durand's invented and adapted wind instruments. Gatefold sleeve; art by Terri Hanlon; archival photographs and new liner notes from Behrman and Durand.
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LP
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LML 1041LP
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Lovely Music present a reissue of David Behrman's On the Other Ocean, originally issued as one of Lovely Music's first six releases in 1978. This newly-mastered LP is a must-have for Behrman aficionados or a perfect introduction to his work.
"I've been engaged for many years in an exploration of ways to make music and intermedia installations in which software and electronic devices interact with human performers. I've wanted to make works that have personalities, which remain distinct and recognizable, yet are open to surprising changes that can come about when they are performed or exhibited." --David Behrman
"Remarkable achievements on a purely technological level. Behrman's carefully programmed Kim-I system listens to tones played by the live performers, instantly analyzes the situation, and responds by playing back electronic tones of its own. This is undoubtedly the first time that humans and electronic sound equipment have communicated with one another with high degrees of spontaneity and intelligence on both ends of the wire. But the music that results is perhaps even more remarkable. Subtle, sustained, serene, sophisticated, super." --Tom Johnson, The Village Voice, Dec. 18, 1978
Recorded at the Center for Contemporary Music, Mills College, Oakland, California, Sept. 18, 1977, and at the Electronic Music Studio, State University of New York at Albany, June 9, 1977. Personnel: On the Other Ocean: David Behrman - electronics; Maggi Payne - flute; Arthur Stidfole - bassoon Figure in a Clearing: David Behrman - electronics; David Gibson - cello. 180 gram vinyl, Stoughton Old Style sleeve.
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LP
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NMN 152LP
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2022 restock. Alga Marghen introduce Music With Memory, a new record LP by David Behrman focused on his '70s work with new small, inexpensive devices then known as "microcomputers" equipped with "memory" to be used in live performances and installations. Side A presents "Interspecies Smalltalk" with Takehisa Kosugi (violin) and David Behrman (electronics). A wild intertwining of two worlds of resonance, structure, and tonality, decades ahead of its time. Commissioned by John Cage and Merce Cunningham as music for the 1984 Cunningham Company dance titled "Pictures", it was made to be performed by Takehisa Kosugi playing violin in his uniquely personal style. Side B includes "Circling Six", an earlier version of a more extended piece titled "Leapday Night". "Circling Six" had six looping synthesizer phrases which could be played along with by the acoustic instrumentalist, on this recording by Werner Durand on saxophone. "Interspecies Smalltalk" and "Circling Six" were pieces for instrumental performers and a small computer-controlled music system that Behrman assembled during the 1980s. The electronic gear consisted of pitch sensors ("ears" with which it listened to the performing musicians), various music synthesizers (some homemade), a video display, and a personal computer. The pieces were made with computer programs governing interaction between performers and the electronics. The software created situations rather than set pieces. The performers had options rather than instructions, and the exploration of each situation as it unfolded was up to them. Also on side B is a short track titled "All Thumbs" for two electrified mbiras (African instruments of ancient origin also known as thumb pianos, kalimbas, or zanzas). This piece grew out of a collaborative sound and video installation that George Lewis and David Behrman made for the opening of the Paris science museum La Villette in the spring of 1986. The metal tines of the mbiras were linked to sensors and to a computer music system. In this concert version, played together with Fast Forward, the piece was in several sections. All the sounds in "All Thumbs" were electronically generated. Includes liner notes by David Behrman and photos of the performances, as well as original programs of the Music With Memory Festival. Edition of 400.
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CD
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LCD 1042CD
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2022 restock;; originally release on Lovely Music in 1987. A series of three pieces/suites; "Leapday Night", "A Traveler's Dream Journal", and "Interspecies Smalltalk" involving Rhys Chatham/Ben Neill (on trumpet/mutantrumpet), Fluxus mainstay Takehisa Kosugi (violin), and David Behrman himself on electronics. Behrman creates thickly layered liquid sounds utilizing this complex computer music system which absorbs, actually hears, the sounds of instrumentalists, and then plays off their improvisations with its own synthesized reactions. The system consists of pitch sensors ("ears" with which it listens to the performing musicians), various music synthesizers (some homemade), a computer graphics color video display and a personal computer. "Heavy period-synth float with bare accompaniment, thankfully just-pre DX-7."
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CD
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LCD 1041CD
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2023 restock of the original CD version; recently awarded: 9.0 Best New Reissue on Pitchfork, Originally released on Lovely Music in 1978. David Behrman's On The Other Ocean is an improvisation by Maggi Payne and Arthur Stidfole centered around six pitches which, when they are played, activate electronic pitch-sensing circuits connected to the "interrupt" line and input ports of a microcomputer, Kim-1. The microcomputer can sense the order and timing in which the six pitches are played and can react by sending harmony-changing messages to two handmade music synthesizers. The relationship between the two musicians and the computer is an interactive one, with the computer changing the electronically-produced harmonies in response to what the musicians play, and the musicians influenced in their improvising by what the computer does. Figure In A Clearing, made a few months before On The Other Ocean, was the first piece of Behrman's to use a computer for music. For Figure, the Kim-1 ran a program which varied the time intervals between chord changes. The time intervals were modelled on the motion of a satellite in falling elliptical orbit about a planet. David Gibson's only "score" was a list of six pitches to be used in performance, and a request that he not speed up when the computer-controlled rhythm did. The timbral richness and concentrated eloquence of his playing sprang from his own sources. Personnel: David Behrman - electronics, Kim-1 microcomputer; Maggi Payne - flute; Arthur Stidfole - bassoon; David Gibson - cello. Recording engineers: "Blue" Gene Tyranny and Richard Lainhart. Charming booklet notes by David Behrman.
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2CD
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XI 129CD
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2021 restock. Two CDs for the price of one. David Behrman has been active as a composer and artist since the 1960s. Over the years he has made sound and multimedia installations for gallery spaces as well as musical compositions. Sam Behrman and Siegfried Sassoon met in 1920, when Behrman, then a young writer working at The New York Times, was sent to interview Sassoon at the start of the English poet's postwar American lecture tour. In that tour Sassoon was billed as "England's Soldier-Poet." He had a reputation both as a war hero and an anti-war poet and peace activist. Many years later, each author wrote about this youthful meeting, which inaugurated a long-lasting friendship and a correspondence, mostly conducted via trans-Atlantic letters between England and America, which continued into the 1950s. My Dear Siegfried provides a performance environment in which musicians interact with texts by the two authors and with music software designed to respond to the performers' actions. The texts and the software elements are arranged as a linear thread along which the piece progresses. In QSRL (1998) a sensor listens to what the performer is doing and a computer music system provides responses to information the sensor takes in. Viewfinder (2002) is a sound installation using software based on homemade synthesizer music of the early 1970s. In A New Team Takes Over (1969), homemade synthesizer modules were used in this piece to distort recordings made off the air of press conferences by members of the new Nixon administration following the American election of 1968. Touch Tones (1979), from the early days of music done with the help of newly-available, small, inexpensive "microcomputers," made use of a kind of primitive artificial intelligence scheme. Pools of Phase Locked Loops (1972) was one of four pieces made in response to commissions to the artists of the Sonic Arts Union (Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, and Behrman). The recording is from a live performance at Radio Bremen in May 1972.
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CD
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XI 105CD
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2022 restock. Unforeseen Events is one of many pieces David Behrman has made with computer software designed to interact in real time with a solo performer. The four sections recorded here were made specifically with Ben Neill's performance style in mind. The electronic timbres are intended to complement the sounds of his instrument, the admirable and humorous mutantrumpet, with its three separately-mutable and playable bells. Refractive Light consists of three small pieces based on an interweaving and overlapping of simple phrases. A musician strikes pitches that trigger responses in the form of sustained tones. The tones die out after a few seconds. While a tone is on it deflects the pitches of other "on" tones, so that harmonic changes occur at the on-and-off edges of overlappping layers. The idea can give rise to a kind of fanning or breathing rhythm that adapts itself to different styles of playing, and to a harmonic vocabulary with dozens or scores of family members.
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CD
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NMN 020CD
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2015 remastered CD in digipak with 12-page booklet including liner notes written by the composer as well as diagrams and scores relating to the published works. Wave Train, originally released by Alga Marghen in 1998, collects experimental works by David Behrman recorded between 1959 and 1968, featuring the Sonic Arts Union. The CD starts with "Canons," a short piece created in Darmstadt over three weeks in the summer of 1959 with David Tudor on piano and Christoph Caskel on percussion. "Ricercar" is a prepared piano piece made in 1961 and has the flexible form of the kind favored by European composers in the early 1960s, and also reflects the work of Cowell and Cage. "Wave Train" (1966), a powerful feedback piece performed live with Gordon Mumma, marks the radical moment when Behrman threw away established techniques. "Players With Circuits" (1966) is an exploration of raw materials; a combination of live electronics and amplified acoustic sound. "Sounds for a Film By Bob Watts," for outdoor environment recording and homemade synthesizer, was recorded at Stony Point, the artists' cooperative which John Cage, David Tudor, Sari Dienes, and other friends had established. The last piece, "Runthrough," was made for performance by members of the Sonic Arts Union: Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, Robert Ashley, and, of course, Behrman himself; two of them working the dials and switches of homemade synthesizers, and two others distributing sound in space with homemade photocell mixers; Time Records released a different version of this piece in 1969.
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2LP
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NMN 020LP
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2002 release. Double LP reprint of the famous David Behrman Wave Train album. Experimental music from 1959-1968: "Canons" features David Tudor on piano and Christoph Caskel on percussion; "Ricecar" is a prepared piece performed by David Behrman in the early 1960s; "Wave Train" is a powerful feedback piece performed live with Gordon Mumma; "Players with Circuits" is a combination of live electronics and amplified acoustic sound; "Sounds for a Film by Robert Watts" is for an outdoor environment recording with homemade synthesizer recorded at Stony Point; and "Runthrough" features Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, Robert Ashley and Behrman on dials and switches from a homemade synthesizer and distributing sound in space with homemade photocell mixers (different from the version released on the Sonic Arts Union LP). This edition comes in a color gatefold LP cover with new graphics and lay-out. Edition of 500 copies only.
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