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

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AGP78 is the second of two devoted to Maurice Ohana, a French composer born in Morocco to a father who was a British citizen of Andalusian origin. Born in 1913, Ohana wrote in a variety of styles--often influenced by Spanish folk music but also making full use of the compositional advances of the 1960s and 1970s. I particularly love the elegant and sumptuous combinations of timbres in his music, with extensive use of percussion instruments. 

Most of the recordings in these two Ohana installments are delightfully clear and bright with minimal surface noise. The second covers the period from 1978-1983, featuring his chamber opera Trois Contes de L'Honorable Fleur in a brilliant recording in the Musique Francaise d'Aujourd'Hui series on Philips records. The torrent includes a PDF file with scans of the liner notes of all LPs transcribed for the two installments.

I forgot to mention last week that a 4CD set of some of Ohana's best compositions, originally recorded for Erato records, is available for an insanely good price through amazon.uk (and also amazon.fr):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0002JNLOG?tag=musicwebuk&link_code=as2&creativeASIN=B0002JNLOG&creative=374929&camp=211189

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. 

05 - Trois Contes de L'Honorable Fleur, Side A [25:42]
06 - Trois Contes de L'Honorable Fleur, Side B [26:31]
07 - Two Studies for Piano and Percussion [11:44]
08 - Two Studies for Piano and Percussion [6:08]

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.