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. 

Most AGP torrents are still available through the generosity of other downloaders (and if you like what you hear, please seed them yourself for as long as you can). A Mininova search for "avant garde project" will turn them up. Ignore the seeders/leechers statistics, as they often show no seeders when in fact there are some. For the time being, a new AGP torrent is being seeded around midnight each Friday night (GMT), and is advertised on the I Hate Music Forum. 

NOTE: As of today (June 2, 2006), The Pirate Bay is still down, so all prior AGP installments are running as trackerless torrents and may not download effectively. On their website and in interviews, The Pirate Bay administrators insist that it will be back within a few days, which should make the old torrents available again. If that does not happen, I will begin reseeding them through another tracker. 

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AGP 15 features works by Dieter Schnebel for chamber groups and orchestra, from 1975-1978. The first two are from his Tradition series, and while not strictly canonical are based on canonic processes. In Motu Proprio has long been a favorite of mine, and has some very nice interference harmonies involving pairs of woodwinds playing notes very near the unison. The third is from his Arrangements series. It consists of an arrangement for orchestra of the first movement of Schubert's Piano Sonata in G Major, D. 894. Overlaid with the arrangement is a screen of harmonically dense music for strings, that Schnebel insists is implied in the music that Schubert actually wrote. In the first (live) version, a portion of the screen music is presented alone for the first four minutes or so, followed by the overlay of Schubert and screen music. In the second version, the screen music is performed in its entirety, followed by a full repetition with the Schubert overlay. The mic-ing of the strings is somewhat different in the two recordings, bringing out the overtone frequencies of the strings differently, thus affecting the subjective experience of the relationship between Schubert's music and Schnebel's. The included text file contains notes from both of the LPs that these recordings came from.

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. 

01 - In Motu Proprio [11:00]
02 - Diapason [18:46]
03 - Schubert-Phantasie (live) [18:51]
04 - Schubert-Phantasie [29:12]

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 to deprive any artists of their much-deserved royalties (however small).