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. 

AGP1-133 are now available for direct download in the archive at dream.cs.bath.ac.uk/AvantGardeProject

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AGP135 is the first of three featuring the music of Charles Chaynes, a French composer who held executive positions at France-Musique and Radio-France for much of his career, and so has produced a smaller body of work than he might have otherwise. This installment includes all of the vocal music by Chaynes that I could find in my stacks. This is fetchingly lyrical music exploring a broad range of harmonies and timbres. The influence of Messiaen comes to the fore every once in a while (and that's never a bad thing), but otherwise the style is distinctive. 

The LPs transcribed for this installment are both in excellent condition with little pressing noise. There is gratifyingly little tracking distortion even during the most challenging vocal passages. The torrent includes a PDF file with scans of the liner notes from all four LPs included in this and the next two installments. 

01 - Pour un Monde Noir 1, 1979 [10:19]
02 - Pour un Monde Noir 2 [8:18]
03 - Pour un Monde Noir 3 [6:49]
04 - Pour un Monde Noir 4 [7:15]
05 - Quatre Poemes de Sappho, 1968 [23:03]


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.