The Avant Garde Project is an effort to make available some of my favorite pieces of experimental music from the late 20th century. The extremist intellectual climate of that time gave birth to some of the wildest and most challenging sound combinations that human artistry has ever conceived. The pieces selected for this project were released on LP but have never been released on CD, and so they are effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today. Using an analog rig and pre-amplification that is near state-of-the-art, I am able to extract the sound from the grooves with almost none of the surface noise and tracking distortion normally associated with LPs. 

I am hoping you will find this material as fascinating and beautiful as I do. My hard disk is small, and so I am seriously limited as to how many torrents I can host at one time. If you find any value in your downloads, I ask you please to seed them yourself for as long as possible, so they will continue to be available to other people. Some or all of the first four AGP torrents are still being seeded through the generosity of other downloaders, so check them out if you haven't already. A mininova.com search for "avant garde project" will direct you to them.

==========================

The fifth AGP torrent is pure ear candy. It is a remarkable piece of electroacoustic music by Philippe Mion, released on the INA-GRM (Institut National de L'audiovisuel, Groupe de Recherches Musicales) label in 1987 (INA-GRM no 9118 mi). The GRM was founded by Pierre Schaeffer in the 1950s and merged with the INA in the 1970s. It has included among its members many of the all-time greats of electroacoustic music. Most of the INA-GRM LP releases are now available on CD, and can be bought from electrocd.com in Montreal (as well as other places, I imagine). The INA-GRM catalog includes some dynamite works by Bernard Parmegiani, Ivo Malec, Francois Bayle, and others, that I would certainly include in AGP if they were not already available.

Surprisingly, L'Image Éconduite (The Averted Image) by Philippe Mion does not appear to be in print. Mion assembles a delicious collection of electronic and acoustic sounds, and interleaves them in ways that might be described as fugal. The texture is rich and complex, and yet spare enough to enable each sound combination to be enjoyed to the fullest. L'Image Éconduite was originally a 70-minute composition on 4-track tape, but was trimmed to 57 minutes and reduced to 2 tracks for the LP release. Although divided between the two sides of an LP, it is intended as one uninterrupted movement. The composer recommends that it be listened to fortissimo!

The torrent includes the original liner notes in both English and French. I'm afraid the French notes are an unedited output of my OCR program, as it would have taken too much time to edit them, given my limited French.

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 - L'Image Éconduite, side 1 [28:12]
02 - L'Image Éconduite, side 2 [28:57]

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 paltry).