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. 

AGP1-47 are now available for direct download in the archive at dream.cs.bath.ac.uk/AvantGardeProject

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AGP52 is the second of two devoted to the French composer Gilbert Amy. Like Bruno Maderna in Italy, Amy enjoyed a successful career as a conductor (among other things, succeeding Boulez as conductor of Domaine Musical), while also producing a moderate-sized catalog of quality compositions. Also like Maderna, Amy brought from his experience in conducting a fine ear for orchestral tone combinations. 

This installment includes compositions for more various forces than AGP51. Sonata, Pian'E Forte from 1974 is for soprano, mezzo-soprano, and 12 instruments. Shin'Alim Sha'Ananim from 1979 is for alto voice, clarinet, cello and instrumental ensemble. Relais from 1967-69 is for brass quintet. And Récitatif, Air and Variation from  1970 is for twelve mixed voices a capella. The first two tracks are definitely my favorites in this installment, which is why they are the first two tracks. 

The installment is transcribed from two LPs on the Erato and Disques Ades labels. The Erato LP is in the excellent Musique Francaise D'Aujourd'Hui series. The torrent includes a text file containing liner notes from the two LPs. The liner notes from the Disques Ades release are in French, and are an unedited output of my OCR program. 

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 - Sonata, Pian'E Forte [23:50]
02 - Shin'Alim Sha'Ananim [14:34]
03 - Relais [13:23]
04 - Récitatif, Air and Variation [13:21]

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.