The Avant Garde Project is a series of 20th-century classical-experimental-electroacoustic torrents digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today. This is wild stuff, so check it out if you've never heard this sort of music before. The analog rig used to extract the sound from the grooves is near state-of-the-art, producing almost none of the tracking distortion or surface noise normally associated with LPs. 

AGP1-118 are now available for direct download in the archive at dream.cs.bath.ac.uk/AvantGardeProject

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AGP120 is the first of two featuring works by the influential American composer Lukas Foss. Frankly, he has never been a special favorite of mine, but I enjoyed listening to many of the works in this installment and AGP121. A number of them show clear minimalist influences, but without as much of a populist bent as Steve Reich and Philip Glass had. The rhythms and harmonies are more complex, often to intriguing effect. 

This week's installment includes one Foss composition from the same Deutsche Grammophon LP that filled out AGP119, as well as a work by Elliott Schwartz from the same LP. The remaining tracks come from a Gramavision Records LP (GR7005). The recordings are all quite nice, and the transcriptions have little surface noise or tracking distortion. The torrent includes a PDF file with scans of the liner notes from all LPs transcribed in this installment and AGP121. 

01 - Night Music [13:23]
02 - Measure for Measure [7:57]
03 - Solo Observed [15:11]
04 - Paradigm [17:47]
05 - Elliott Schwartz, Signals [9:33]

Equipment used for A/D conversion: Lyra Helikon phono cartridge, Linn LP12/Lingo turntable, Linn Ittok tonearm, Audioquest LeoPard tonearm cable, PS Audio PS2 preamplifier, Kimber PBJ interconnect, M-Audio Audiophile USB A/D converter. 

NOTE: To the best of my knowledge, these recordings are currently out of print. If you know otherwise, please let me know ASAP, as I do not wish any artists to be deprived of the royalties that they so richly deserve.