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: Santa brought the AGP a copy of the remarkable 12CD set of Bernard Parmegiani's electroacoustic works, which is available from ina.fr and electrocd.com for astonishingly low prices (seriously, check it out and you will be amazed how inexpensive they are). No AGP partisan should be without this collection.

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AGP132 is a transcription of a Thorofon Capella LP (MTH 239) featuring works by the German composer Werner Heider. One of Heider's works was included in AGP94, which contains a PDF file with biographical information about the composer. The works in this installment were all composed between 1972 and 1975, and are consistently engaging. Heider by design adopted a new compositional approach with every work, rather than cultivating a consistent personal style. 

Thorofon's pressings were always of the highest quality, and the recordings of these works are rich and detailed. The torrent includes a PDF file with scans of the liner notes from the LPs transcribed for this installment and AGP133. 

01 - Stundenbuch for 12 singers and 13 brass, 1972 [16:11]
02 - Plakat for orchestra, 1974 [11:42]
03 - Commission for singer and chamber ensemble, 1972 [9:19]
04 - Sinfonie no. 1 for orchestra, 1975 [17:35]

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.