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. 

AGP1-76 are now available for direct download in the archive at dream.cs.bath.ac.uk/AvantGardeProject

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AGP80 is the first of two devoted to the compositions of Christian Wolff, who was born of German parentage in France in 1934, and has lived in the USA from age 7. These two installments are offered in answer to a request by an AGP partisan. Wolff's style in these works is rather spare and cerebral, with careful use of silence and directed improvisation. 

My favorite of the five works in this installment is Burdocks, in part because it is performed in this recording by the most diverse ensemble (Wolff scored it for any number of players) and so features a broader range of timbres. Tracks 01 and 02 are performed by Frederick Rzewski on piano, track 03 is performed by the Societa Cameristica Italiana string quartet (from Wergo WER 60053), and track 04 is performed by David Tudor on organ (from Odyssey 32 16 0158). Tracks 01, 02, and 05 comprise Wergo WER 60063. 

Some of the compositions in this installment are available in other recordings, but Wolff's music is so open-ended in both scoring and performance that each recording is unique. The torrent includes a PDF file with scans of the liner notes from the two LPs from which most of the tracks in AGP80 and AGP81 were transcribed.

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 - For Piano I, 1952 [8:03]
02 - For Pianist, 1959 [14:37]
03 - Summer, 1961 [6:22]
04 - For 1, 2 or 3 People [9:36]
05 - Burdocks, 1970-71 [23:40]

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.