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. 

AGP1-122 are now available for direct download in the archive at dream.cs.bath.ac.uk/AvantGardeProject

AGP NEWS: Another generous AGP partisan has volunteered to serve as a mirror site for the project, so all AGP installments are now available through the home site and at least one mirror site. This should speed up downloads considerably. 

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AGP126 continues our series of electronic compositions from the USA with works by Charles Dodge, who made a big splash in the 1970s as one of the earlier composers using computers to generate electronic sounds. His Earth's Magnetic Field established his reputation and is still his best known work (it is available in a compilation CD on CRI records). 

Track 32 is a realization of a radio play by Samuel Beckett, using a combination of natural and computer-synthesized voice sounds to represent the different player, accompanied in places by computer-generated electronic sounds. The effect is fascinatingly bleak if you have the patience for it. The other tracks are respectively for trumpet and tape, instrumental ensemble (without electronics, but I figured I'd throw it in), and computer-generated sounds. 

The LP from which track 35 was transcribed has a rather annoying surface blemish for the first couple of minutes that I couldn't completely eliminate with click reduction. My apologies. It sounds quite nice after that, and the other tracks are fine except for minor tracking distortion in the last few minutes of track 32 (not surprising, given that they crammed 32 minutes on one LP side). The torrent includes a PDF file with scans of the liner notes from the three LPs transcribed for this installment.

32 - Cascando [32:22]
33 - Folia [11:55]
34 - Extensions [8:08]
35 - Changes [15:48]

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.