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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AGP121 is the second of two featuring works by the influential American composer Lukas Foss. These works from the late 1970s show even clearer minimalist tendencies than those in AGP120, again with more complex harmonies than in the works of the leading minimalists of that time. The String Quartet No. 3 sounds like something Steve Reich might have written if he had been a serial killer. In places, it reminds me of George Crumb's Black Angels for amplified string quartet. The transcription was generally successful, but not surprisingly had some tracking distortion during the dense, loud conclusion at the end of the LP side.

The torrent includes a PDF file with scans of the liner notes from all LPs transcribed in this installment and AGP120. 

06 - String Quartet No. 3 [21:57]
07 - Music for Six [16:23]
08 - Curriculum Vitae [7:43]

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.