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Richard Maxfield / Harold Budd, "The Oak of the Golden Dreanms" & Charlemagne Pasestine, "In Mid Air
New World
Alga Marghen
The truth regarding the history of minimalism and American experimentalmusic from the 60s is, despite the best efforts of certainmusicologists and writers, becoming much more widely know. As it does,more and more labels get in on the game of releasing the archivalrecordings that document the history better that any text can. Thesetwo CDs are part of this revisionism. Maxfield was older than most ofthe 60s pioneers; he had his grounding in the academy, ambitions ofbeing a composer of serious music, and access to the space and musicianresources of the classical world. He was pretty much ready to roll whenCage hit the scene. But his music, as presented here in these fourworks from 1960 to 63, is immediate, effective and without the need oftheoretical crutches. Each of these pieces can be seen as inventiveAmerican responses to develoments in the European avant-garde: Pastoral Symphonyto 18's electronic music but with the major difference of having beencontinuously synthesized (on which synth I wonder?) rather than splicedtogether; Bacchanale to Schaeffer's and Henry's musique concrète here incorporating beat poetry, jazz and narrative; Piano Concert for David Tudor, combining tape music with live piano, to Stockhausen's Kontakte (1960 version) with similarly unexpected and dramatic results; and finally Amazing Grace,based as it is on repetitive tape loops, being the most intrinsicallyAmerican of all. Maxfield's valuable and underrated work was ended in1969 when he died, a casualty of 60s drug culture. Harold Budd's musicis much less to my taste. I never put much effort into exploring hismusic since none of it ever caught my fancy but Budd's place in theworld of ambient and spiritualized meditative music is obviously one ofintegrity. The Oak of the Golden Dreams catches Buddimprovising bagpipe music on the Buchla synth in 1970, a twiddley modalchanter line over a continuous E flat drone (but it's probably relevantthat I grew up in Scotland to hate bagpipes). Coeur D'Orr hasessentially the same structure: two organ chords, D flat major on theright channel and B major on the left, sit there shimmering andswelling while Charles Oreña noodles a highly expressionist and attimes decidedly jazzy (Coltrane rather than Paul Desmond) line on thesoprano sax. Initially (the sax only comes in in the third minute) theresemblance to Charlemagne Palestine's organ music is obvious. But herethe organ is static and not central, functioning as a bed for melodicimprovisation within the static harmonic sound shape. Thecorrespondence to, say, Frank Zappa's guitar noodling within staticstructures, e.g. 'Ship Ahoy', is more accurate. Such overtly happy(hippy?) music isn't my bag but if you dig Budd these are surely twoimportant documents. 
Andso to the Palestine CD which presents five slices of his electronicdrone music recorded between 1967 and 1970. Palestine's innatepredilection for evolving static sounds, transcendental drones andspiritual elevation was evident well before he first had access to thesynthesizers that allowed real-time manipulation of additive (combiningdifferent tones) and subtractive (filtering) synthesis. Thepossibilities for improvised drone music were obvious and he eventuallyhad a custom machine built for this purpose with 16 ultra-stableoscillators from Serge Tcherepnin and 4 band pass filters from DonaldBuchla. The five pieces here, all subtitled Late Night Electronic Sonority,are snapshots from his "spectral continuum searches for the goldensonority—day, week, month long journeys of harmonies and theirovertones in constant evolution in time and transformation in space."The music is heavy with tension, balanced somewhere between fear,existential question and the possibility of hope; glistening,shimmering and perfectly judged. It's a remarkable achievement thatPalestine originated this approach to music, the instrument design andits musical practice, performed these masterful improvisations,inspired a whole generation of musicians and wound up as a merefootnote, if that, in the history of minimalism. Take those PhillipGlass and John Adams disks down to the thrift store and get abordminimalism's revisionist revolution; apart from being more authentic,the real stuff is of infinitely superior taste and actually has a soul.
Alga Marghen
The truth regarding the history of minimalism and American experimentalmusic from the 60s is, despite the best efforts of certainmusicologists and writers, becoming much more widely know. As it does,more and more labels get in on the game of releasing the archivalrecordings that document the history better that any text can. Thesetwo CDs are part of this revisionism. Maxfield was older than most ofthe 60s pioneers; he had his grounding in the academy, ambitions ofbeing a composer of serious music, and access to the space and musicianresources of the classical world. He was pretty much ready to roll whenCage hit the scene. But his music, as presented here in these fourworks from 1960 to 63, is immediate, effective and without the need oftheoretical crutches. Each of these pieces can be seen as inventiveAmerican responses to develoments in the European avant-garde: Pastoral Symphonyto 18's electronic music but with the major difference of having beencontinuously synthesized (on which synth I wonder?) rather than splicedtogether; Bacchanale to Schaeffer's and Henry's musique concrète here incorporating beat poetry, jazz and narrative; Piano Concert for David Tudor, combining tape music with live piano, to Stockhausen's Kontakte (1960 version) with similarly unexpected and dramatic results; and finally Amazing Grace,based as it is on repetitive tape loops, being the most intrinsicallyAmerican of all. Maxfield's valuable and underrated work was ended in1969 when he died, a casualty of 60s drug culture. Harold Budd's musicis much less to my taste. I never put much effort into exploring hismusic since none of it ever caught my fancy but Budd's place in theworld of ambient and spiritualized meditative music is obviously one ofintegrity. The Oak of the Golden Dreams catches Buddimprovising bagpipe music on the Buchla synth in 1970, a twiddley modalchanter line over a continuous E flat drone (but it's probably relevantthat I grew up in Scotland to hate bagpipes). Coeur D'Orr hasessentially the same structure: two organ chords, D flat major on theright channel and B major on the left, sit there shimmering andswelling while Charles Oreña noodles a highly expressionist and attimes decidedly jazzy (Coltrane rather than Paul Desmond) line on thesoprano sax. Initially (the sax only comes in in the third minute) theresemblance to Charlemagne Palestine's organ music is obvious. But herethe organ is static and not central, functioning as a bed for melodicimprovisation within the static harmonic sound shape. Thecorrespondence to, say, Frank Zappa's guitar noodling within staticstructures, e.g. 'Ship Ahoy', is more accurate. Such overtly happy(hippy?) music isn't my bag but if you dig Budd these are surely twoimportant documents. Andso to the Palestine CD which presents five slices of his electronicdrone music recorded between 1967 and 1970. Palestine's innatepredilection for evolving static sounds, transcendental drones andspiritual elevation was evident well before he first had access to thesynthesizers that allowed real-time manipulation of additive (combiningdifferent tones) and subtractive (filtering) synthesis. Thepossibilities for improvised drone music were obvious and he eventuallyhad a custom machine built for this purpose with 16 ultra-stableoscillators from Serge Tcherepnin and 4 band pass filters from DonaldBuchla. The five pieces here, all subtitled Late Night Electronic Sonority,are snapshots from his "spectral continuum searches for the goldensonority—day, week, month long journeys of harmonies and theirovertones in constant evolution in time and transformation in space."The music is heavy with tension, balanced somewhere between fear,existential question and the possibility of hope; glistening,shimmering and perfectly judged. It's a remarkable achievement thatPalestine originated this approach to music, the instrument design andits musical practice, performed these masterful improvisations,inspired a whole generation of musicians and wound up as a merefootnote, if that, in the history of minimalism. Take those PhillipGlass and John Adams disks down to the thrift store and get abordminimalism's revisionist revolution; apart from being more authentic,the real stuff is of infinitely superior taste and actually has a soul.
