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. 

AGP1-23 are now available for direct download in the archive at dream.cs.bath.ac.uk/AvantGardeProject

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. 

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With AGP28, the Avant Garde Project has officially gone off the deep end. It is the first in an occasional series of "found" avant garde, meaning that the recordings are not avant garde compositions per se, but I have for years enjoyed listening to them in the same spirit as I listen to late 20th century music. AGP28 is also the first installment containing organized sound created by non-human animals. Culled from two LPs, it comprises an assortment of underwater recordings of humpback whales, beluga whales, narwhals, orcas, and bearded seals. 

The humpback whale recordings come from an LP that introduced the world to whale songs, "Songs of the Humpback Whale." It was originally released in 1970 on CRM records to publicize the plight of whales in the late 20th century, and later re-released on Capitol Records. These transcriptions come from the original CRM release, which has a richer sound and less pressing noise than the re-release. These recordings were made by Roger Payne. More such recordings were released on a second Capitol LP, which is available on CD.

The other recordings (tracks 06-14) come a Music Gallery editions LP from Canada. The songs of these other whale species are entirely different from humpback whale songs, and in many places strikingly resemble some forms of electroacoustic music. The torrent includes notes from the liners and booklets included in the two LPs, including a long account of the discovery and analysis of humpback whale songs. 

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 - Solo humpback whale [9:33]
02 - Slowed-down humpback whale [1:06]
03 - Humpback whales [3:24]
04 - Distant humpback whales [3:58]
05 - Three humpback whales [16:33]
06 - Arctic beluga whales [4:30]
07 - St. Lawrence beluga whales [7:42]
08 - Narwhals [4:23]
09 - Bearded seal [3:20]
10 - Orca [2:49]
11 - Bearded seal [1:48]
12 - Orca [0:54]
13 - Orcas and beluga whales [9:43]
14 - Whale herd [6:52]

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.