Groundbreaking '70s compilation of female electronic artists reissued on vinyl
Containing work by Laurie Spiegel, Laurie Anderson and Pauline Oliveros, the album has been called “a historically significant feminist statement”
A groundbreaking compilation of female electronic composers originally released in 1977 has been reissued on vinyl for the first time by Italian label Blume.
‘New Music For Electronic And Recorded Media’ contains work by many seminal and pioneering electronic artists including Laurie Spiegel, Laurie Anderson, and Pauline Oliveros.
The new liner notes call the eight-track LP both “an astounding document of the landscape of experimental music toward the end of the 1970s” and “a historically significant feminist statement”.
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It is “the first collection of experimental music entirely dedicated to female composers, a number of whom were grossly under-celebrated at the time, but have since gone on to be regarded as among the most important composers of their generation,” write Jennifer Lucy Allen and Bradford Bailey on the record sleeve.
Meanwhile, in the liner notes to the original record, released via Thomas Buckner's 1750 Arch label, Charles Amirkhanian declared: "The music on this album exhibits an exciting, wide-open, free-wheeling approach to the medium of electronic music which has come to be typical of this genre in the late 1970's.”
“No longer are composers obsessively concerned with the agonizing, expressionistic, and purely 'electronic' (synthesized) sound formulas which marked much of this music composed between the mid-Fifties and the late-Sixties,” he continued. “Instead, today we have composers willing to mix media and sonic materials in thoroughly inventive ways to achieve ends which are new-sounding, and often more engaging, than that of the 'academic' avant-garde."
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The recent reissue comes as the third of three releases by Blume in celebration of its 10th anniversary, following the arrival of James Tenney's ‘Postal Pieces' and Ben Vida's 'Vocal Trio'.
Last month, Music From Memory released the final compilation album that the late Jamie Tiller worked on.
‘Virtual Dreams II: Ambient Explorations In The House & Techno Age, Japan 1993-1999’ came exactly a year after the revered DJ passed away in a “tragic accident”, and contained ambient house and techno music by a number of acclaimed Japanese producers.
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Listen to the first track from ‘New Music For Electronic And Recorded Media’ and see full tracklist below. Buy it here.
Tracklist:
A1. Johanna Beyer - Music of the Spheres A2. Annea Lockwood - World Rhythms A3. Pauline Oliveros - Bye Bye Butterfly B1. Laurie Spiegel - Appalachian Grove I B2. Megan Roberts - I Could Sit Here All Day B3. Ruth Anderson - Points B4. Laurie Anderson - New York Social Life B5. Laurie Anderson - Time to Go
Meena Sears is Mixmag's Digital Intern, follow her on Instagram