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. 

AGP1-74 are now available for direct download in the archive at dream.cs.bath.ac.uk/AvantGardeProject

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

AGP76 fulfills another request from an AGP partisan, for a transcription of Peter Maxwell Davies' Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969). It is a theatrical work, recreating the madness suffered by George III during the last years of his life. It is sung by Julius Eastman and scored for flute, clarinets, violin, cello, piano, harpsichord, and percussion. As befits the subject, the singing is in places rather over the top.

The CD transcription for this installment was provided through the generosity of an AGP partisan in Seattle and the booklet notes were scanned by an AGP partisan in Baltimore. The CD release of Eight Songs for a Mad King also includes Miss Donnithorne's Maggot from 1984, which is sung by Mary Thomas and scored for the same ensemble minus the harpsichord. The booklet scans are provided as a set of BMP files in a ZIP archive.

01 - Miss Donnithorne's Maggot [36:27]
02 - Eight Songs for a Mad King [30:12]

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 any artists to be deprived of the royalties that they so richly deserve.