The Avant Garde Project is a series of 20th-century classical, experimental, and 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. 

AGP1-130 are now available for direct download in the archive at dream.cs.bath.ac.uk/AvantGardeProject

AGP NEWS: The AGP will be ritually immured in ice for a few weeks following the solstice. Look for the next installment around January 16th. 

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AGP131 features choral and vocal works by three Spanish composers: Felix Ibarrondo, Carmelo Bernaola, and Tómas Marco. The four works by Ibarrondo are drawn from a Harmonia Mundi LP devoted to his compositions. They are choral works that remind me in places of Ligeti's Requiem and the sacred choral works of Penderecki. Sino is my favorite--combining a mixed choir with horns and thundering timani. The works by Bernaola and Marco are drawn from the same 2LP set as Al son que tocan by Luis de Pablo from AGP17. The works in that set are all homages to the great Spanish poet Antonio Machado. They feature a combination of individual speaking and singing voices with choral passages, and a glittery instrumental ensemble dominated by percussion and plucked string instruments - particularly in track 05.

The recordings and pressings in this installment are all quite nice. The torrent includes a PDF file with scans of the liner notes from the two LPs transcribed for this installment. The installment is 18 seconds longer than 80 minutes, but you should be able to fit it on one CD by overburning, if your software permits that.

01 - Ibarrondo: Sino [14:59]
02 - Ibarrondo: Odolez [5:53]
03 - Ibarrondo: Zoro Dantzak [6:01]
04 - Ibarrondo: Argiruntz [9:32]
05 - Bernaolo: Ayer...soñé que soñaba [18:33]
06 - Marco: Ecos de Antonio Machado [25:16]

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.