Who’s hungry for some crunchy algorithms? Two records of archival works by Martin Bartlett — something of an unsung hero of electroacoustic history — are set for release on Arc Light Editions.
Anecdotal Electronics: Live Experiments & Other Recordings and Ankle On: Electronic and Orchestral Works will be released May 10.
Bartlett was both a composer and thinker, and text from his “Electronic Recalcitrant” adorns the cover of Anecdotal Electronics. He was devoted to integrating aleatoric elements into electronic music and devised interactions between instrumentalists and computer-controlled instruments. “Perhaps we’ll just pluck elegant and fleshy electronic sound from the frothy algorithmic sea of possibilities,” he wrote; and Arc Light Editions’ press release for the records notes that, during a 1975 performance of his piece “One Piece for Everyone,” Bartlett cooked a cauliflower curry on a table connected to one of his synthesizers while reading aloud from food-oriented texts. (Sure, cauliflower ≠ fish, but it is fleshy, in a sense.)
Bartlett created his own electronic musical devices, and he worked with Don Buchla on the Buchla 400 synthesizer; other collaborators and teachers included Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, David Tudor, Don Buchla, V. Lakshminarayana Iyer, Pandit Pran Nath, and K.R.T. Wasitidipuro — quite the CV!
Cauliflower curry, sadly, is not included with these records, but you can pre-order them here, and look at their tracklists (and check out some archival materials) below! Yum?
Anecdotal Electronics: Live Experiments & Other Recordings tracklisting:
01. Quarry (Edit)
02. Muscle Music (Edit)
03. Humors Accompaniment 2
04. Humors Accompaniment 3
05. Humors Accompaniment 4
06. Time Passing X (Edit)
07. More Lines From Chuang Tzu (Edit)
08. Pulse Material G Major
09. Three Songs (feat. *Dan Shiedt* + *Doug Collinge*)
10. Amsterdam Variations
11. Buchla Bartlett Duo (Edit)
12. Electronic Recalcitrant
13. Marginalia (Edit)
14. Humors Song
15. Humors Accompaniment 5
Ankle On: Electronic and Orchestral Works tracklisting:
01. Raga
02. Ankle On
03. Helix
More about: Martin Bartlett
