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. 

AGP1-138 are now available for direct download in the archive at dream.cs.bath.ac.uk/AvantGardeProject

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The AGP celebrates its three-year anniversary with the first in a series of transcriptions of the long out-of-print ReR Quarterly, produced by Recommended Records. Released at irregular intervals of no less than three months, the series continued through three volumes of LP releases, before switching to the CD medium for a fourth volume starting in 1994, and then ending in 1997. Each volume except the third consisted of four issues containing a magazine and either an LP or CD of music. A pair of CDs with selected tracks from the first two volumes were released in 1991, but those are now also long out of print. A complete track listing for the series can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReR_Quarterly.

The tracks in these installments run the gamut from electroacoustic music to free improvisation to poetry recitation to avant-pop. Many of the artists participated in the protest movements of that time and were devoted partisans of a revolutionary ethos. Most of the tracks were recorded and produced on a shoestring budget, but even so the sound quality is often excellent. And even in the more primitive recordings, the range of timbres explored can be quite striking. 

AGP141 is a transcription of the LP from volume 1, issue 1, released in May 1985. It is an excellent pressing in excellent condition, with negligible surface noise or tracking distortion. The torrent includes a PDF file with scans of the pages from the magazine describing the music on the LP. The scans encompass the four issues of volume 1, which will be released in the next four AGP installments.

01 - Steve Moore: The Threshold of Liberty [9:28]
02 - Lars Hollmer: Experiment [1:20]
03 - Chris Cutler/Lindsay Cooper: Education [3:44]
04 - 5 uu's: Compomisation [2:48]
05 - Joseph Racaille: Dans les Yeux Bleues [1:16]
06 - The Lowest Note: Naiwabi [2:34]
07 - Adrian Mitchell: Sorry 'bout That [1:57]
08 - Kalahari Surfers: Prayer for Civilisation [5:03]
09 - Mission Impossible: Indefinite [3:42]
10 - Adrian Mitchell: Song in Space [2:16]
11 - Stefano Delu: Pensa un Numero [0:40]
12 - Mikolas Chadima: A Walk Around the Brewery [6:48]
13 - Adrian Mitchell: Saw it in the Papers [3:58]

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 not currently available commercially. 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.