LP – Dialogo

Cramps was an Italian label founded in the early seventies, mainly focused on progressive music, but also active in the nascent contemporary scene at that time. Among its historical releases was an unmissable reissue of the series Nova Musicha, featuring Microphone by David Tudor. The album, originally released in 1978, still resonates today, featuring experiments with microphone feedback, acoustic effects that are artfully modulated by the composer and musician. Industrial, pre-electronic, compelling, and raw sounds are also created by means of overlapping recording techniques. These sounds, divided into precise sections, were played by Tudor during live performances or in installations, or repeated and even altered in various ways. The final album presents only two mixes, clearly chosen from many different options. The recordings are now remastered in audiophile quality and presented with an exact reproduction of the original packaging (a stylized pattern designed by Gianni Sassi, art director, graphic designer and head owner of Cramps). The revival of the work is now released by Dialogo, a label from Luciano Cantone that has already reissued some interesting works by Piero Umiliani, Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai and Steve Lacy. A collaborator of John Cage in the 1950s, Tudor was the original performer of many of Cage’s first innovative, conceptual, and ambitious compositions, as well as being the pianist of choice for other seminal experimenters such as Stockhausen, Feldman, Boulez and Bussotti. Microphone was originally conceived as an ambient work for the Pepsi pavilion at the Osaka Expo 70 but was recorded in 1973 at the famous Mills College, an institution frequented at that time by musicians as Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros and Luciano Berio. While it features interesting sonic effects and manipulations, it is the use of microphones that remains innovative even today, as does the concept of a composition that is naturally modular and iridescent.

 

David Tudor – Microphone