|
|
 UbuWeb Sound
UbuWeb
|
Michael Nyman (b. 1944) Decay Music Total time 48:24 LP released on Island Records, Obscure #6, 1976 From 1968 to 1976, Michael Nyman worked as a music critic for various magazines (Studio International, Time Out, Tempo, The New Stateman or The Spectator). He studied 16th and 17th c. baroque music in the mid-1960s, composing only a handful of musical pieces prior to the present 'Decay Music' in 1976, the real starting point of his carreer as a composer. '1-100' is an auto-generative composition for piano that feeds itself along the way while remaining fairly minimal throughout. The kind of music that makes sense at low listening level Ð I would advise trying the experience at least once. After all, this is inspired by Erik Satie's musique d'ameublement (furniture music). 'Bell Set No.1' is a brilliant pseudo-gamelan composition with a slight touch of 'Pump and Circumstances'. The interprets are Nigel Shipway and Michael Nyman on metallophones, ie: bells, triangle, gongs, cymbals and tam-tam. 'Bell Set No.1' is a system piece based on the percussions' sharp attack and slow decay, alternatively enhancing each. It works perfectly as a sound installation devoid of progression or change, without beginning nor end. I think the piece bears some influences from Henry Wolff and Nancy Jennings' 1971 'Tibetan Bells', one of the earliest example of fusion between ethnic and meditative music. 'Bell Set' is a gorgeous piece of upper-class british gamelan played with tongues firmly in cheek as if composed for an imaginary tea ceremony at Windsor Castle. Note: as with the entire Obscure series, LP pressing quality is bad, probably made from recycled vinyl. It seems the Island Record A&R manager who commissioned it didn't believe in any commercial potential for the series. Notes by Continuo Presented in collaboration with Continuo
UbuWeb Sound | UbuWeb PennSound | Artmob | EPC | WFMU |