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CD
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SV 175CD
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"David Cunningham was born in Ireland in 1954. His work ranges from pop music to gallery installations including several collaborations with visual artists. His first significant commercial success came with The Flying Lizards' single 'Money,' an international hit in 1979. Originally released in 1976, Cunningham's first solo album Grey Scale has become a landmark statement of DIY minimalist composition -- continuing in the vein of the wild explosion of arthouse experimentation from the early '70s. Cunningham, then a student at the Maidstone College of Art in Kent, drafted fellow student non-musicians and (using whatever instruments available) crafted an endlessly shifting sonic palette with an improvisor's keen sensitivity to space, texture and tone. As Cunningham states in the liner notes, his approach was to 'pursue something (which may appear trivial or meaningless) so rigorously or relentlessly to the point that it reveals something new.' Cunningham was influenced by live performances he was attending at the time by English composers Cornelius Cardew, Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman as well as free improvisors Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, David Toop and Paul Burwell. The inaugural release on Cunningham's own Piano label, Grey Scale was indeed 'something new' in 1976. The artist quickly integrated his experimental sensibilities to produce art-rock pioneers This Heat, whose debut appeared on Piano in 1979. His popular success performing as The Flying Lizards (with two electro-punk albums on Virgin during the new wave era) was presaged by this seminal work of fascinating sound collage and tonal freedom. First-time reissue."
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LP
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SV 175LP
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LP version. "David Cunningham was born in Ireland in 1954. His work ranges from pop music to gallery installations including several collaborations with visual artists. His first significant commercial success came with The Flying Lizards' single 'Money,' an international hit in 1979. Originally released in 1976, Cunningham's first solo album Grey Scale has become a landmark statement of DIY minimalist composition -- continuing in the vein of the wild explosion of arthouse experimentation from the early '70s. Cunningham, then a student at the Maidstone College of Art in Kent, drafted fellow student non-musicians and (using whatever instruments available) crafted an endlessly shifting sonic palette with an improvisor's keen sensitivity to space, texture and tone. As Cunningham states in the liner notes, his approach was to 'pursue something (which may appear trivial or meaningless) so rigorously or relentlessly to the point that it reveals something new.' Cunningham was influenced by live performances he was attending at the time by English composers Cornelius Cardew, Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman as well as free improvisors Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, David Toop and Paul Burwell. The inaugural release on Cunningham's own Piano label, Grey Scale was indeed 'something new' in 1976. The artist quickly integrated his experimental sensibilities to produce art-rock pioneers This Heat, whose debut appeared on Piano in 1979. His popular success performing as The Flying Lizards (with two electro-punk albums on Virgin during the new wave era) was presaged by this seminal work of fascinating sound collage and tonal freedom. First-time reissue."
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CD
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PIANO 505
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1992 CD reissue of an album originally released only in Japan. "This music is not only concerned with voices. The voice is the element which unifies the differing treatments. Through this point of reference the processes are exposed and allowed an identity beyond the role of pure manipulation. The technical procedures are not in themselves important. They are devices. A vocabulary of musical electronics (as opposed to electronic music) to structure the voicings of other musics. The important element in the construction of much of this music is the exploration of 'soft' systems, responsive systems as opposed to pure process.The studio and associated machines draw on the grain. The physical properties, of the source material. This overall approach deals with music as texture and as a time-based activity as well as rhythm, melody and harmony. For the most part it can only exist as recorded sound."
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