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. 

AGP1-59 are now available for direct download in the archive at dream.cs.bath.ac.uk/AvantGardeProject

NOTE: AGP60 has been withdrawn because 4 of 5 tracks were found to be available on CD after the torrent was initially seeded. The remaining track can be downloaded directly from the AGP archive.

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AGP62 is a transcription of Wolfgang Rihm's opera Jakob Lenz, from a 2LP release on Deutsche Harmonia Mundi. Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz was a poet, playright, and friend of Goethe's, who experienced a psychotic breakdown starting in 1777. The year before, he wrote the play Die Soldaten that was the inspiration for Bernd Alois Zimmermann's opera of the same name, the concert suite from which was featured in AGP10. 

Rihm's opera is scored for chamber orchestra, voices, and chorus, and has a correspondingly spare sound. The instrumentation and vocal techniques beautifully express the emotional tumult experienced by the poet during the emergence of his madness. Jakob Lenz was Rihm's second opera, composed when he was just 26 years old. Rihm has since become one of the most popular avant-garde composers in Germany, with many works currently available on CD. Jakob Lenz, however appears still to be out of print.

The torrent includes a PDF file containing the English-language liner notes from the original LP release, including a facsimile of the libretto with what appear to be corrections in Rihm's own hand. The first three pages of this file contain notes from another LP, including an account of Rihm's career and notes on a work that was originally to be included in AGP61 until I located a currently-available version on CD.

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 - Jakob Lenz, scenes 1-5 [20:17]
02 - Jakob Lenz, scenes 6-7 [19:49]
03 - Jakob Lenz, scenes 8-11 [14:28]
04 - Jakob Lenz, scenes 12-end [16:41]

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.