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 walter gropius 		there are 2 titles featuring pietro grossi in stock.
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$20.42

new to stock as of
may 19th, 2006

threads:
1960s-electornic
1970s-electronic
computer

file under:
early-electronic
electro-acoustic
sound-research
modern-composition
lo-fi
creel pone (italy) #creelp grossi cd

pietro grossi “computer music / buon natale 1967 e felice anno nuovo” double compact disc recordable and three inch compact disc recordable set

  • two discs and a bonus mini-disc housed in its own sleeve!
disc i “computer music” record i
  • demonstration at the terminal duration 12’ 34”
  • prelude ii (j. s. bach) from «the well tempered clavier» duration 1’ 10”
  • six canons (j. s. bach) from the «musical offering» duration 5’ 20”
  • virtuosità 1st movement duration 3’ 58”
  • virtuosità 2nd movement duration 1’ 25”
  • virtuosità 3rd movement duration 3’ 21”
  • virtuosità 4th movement duration 2’ 02”
  • virtuosità 5th movement duration 8’ 58”
disc ii “computer music” record ii
  • combinatoria duration 3’ 40”
  • polifonia duration 5’ 20”
  • monodia duration 10’
  • unending music (fragment) duration 19’ 30”
bonus mini-disc “buon natale 1967 e felice anno nuovo” (merry christmas 1967 and happy new year) 7” record
  • seven un-named pieces duration 10’ 22”
note - from here on forward, all creel pone editions now feature beautiful full-color printed discs featuring detail of the sleeve art! mr. p.c. c.p. has completely out-done himself with this new completely over-the-top replication-spec that’s got to be costing him just so much more to produce than he’s letting them go for...perhaps the recent critcal lauding(s) of the creel pone series from none other than simon reynolds has something to do w/this radical production value step-up...

historically i’ve never been all that fond of first or even second-tier moog/computer-sploitation lps; i’m talking about “switched on bach” and the flock that followed in its wake - “switched on country” / “everything you always wanted to know about the moog*” / etc... while i’m sure it was all well & good @ the time (as the record-buying public proved in record numbers), but in retrospect it’s not all that interesting to hear mussorgsky’s “pictures at an exhibition” synthesized on a moog 900 series modular, or george jones on a pdp-11 at that...

so... why is this collection of late 60s / early 70s computerized insanity, presented in essentially the same manner (albeit with much nicer artwork), so damn amazing? in the same way that someone like louis wain’s later paintings of cats are so damn amazing when compared to those of his “fruitful” career; he, not unlike grossi here, went through the looking glass and came out the other end with his grand-vision altered beyond recognition...

the first disc/lp offers a 12 minute demo (in italian) of the ibm system/360 software systems (referred to as dcmp* and play1800* throughout...), then 2 bach pieces, then a side of paganini etudes, all realized using the aforementioned software/hardware system... but even here we’re starting to witness signs of grossi’s willingness to roam into “non-musical” territory; parts are sped up and slowed down well beyond recognition, parameters are ruthlessly tweaked into needle-in-the-forehead domains using shrill, generally unpleasant timbres... but that’s not even the weirdest part...

by the second disc/lp, grossi has thrown the notion of realizing “known” music(s) out the window entirely, instead offering up a series of blistering original compositions realized on the same system/software... only these are just fried, buzzing-bee-scapes, on par with with what people like florian hecker are doing with modern machines and software... yet this was back in 1971! by the time the 20-minute “unending music” starts drilling through your cortex, things are already way beyond normal and far into the realms of the unreal... case in point grossi’s own description of said piece in the booklet (also containing an essay entitled “computer and pentagram” (?!?)) ::

“sound agglomerates the elaboration of which, as in the case of «monodia», is virtually unending. in this work, variations in timbre and volume of the sound are added to those of tempo and frequency. the composition of monodic, with the exception of a two voices section from the eleventh to the fifteenth minute. direct bi-channel recording was made possible by the digital-analog converter”

as to the “sound agglomerates” :: anyone’s guess... one can almost witness grossi’s descent into madness as the solo studio hours/tan start piling up; the neat holes in all of those punch cards getting messier and messier (again... ala louis wain; his cats getting more & more angular; their insane eyes eventually taking over the frame...vs. grossi’s transposed classical melodies eventually giving way to a collection of 200mph atonal arpeggiation and raw sawtooth burn...) those wanting to experience the whole range from method to madness can start right at the beginning; others with shorter attention spans and a tendency towards the absurd will want to jump right to the second disc for a veritable mind-fuck that trumps most contemporary computer-skree... just ridiculously noisy/buzzing sawtooth crunch... and again, from the early 70s no less!

...and if that’s not enough, included in the pack is a bonus mini-disc containing a full replica (with its own sleeve & everything!) of a 1967 7” single given as a christmas gift to italian olivetti / general electric employees, containing just over 10 minutes of christmas-themed ibm system/360 nonsense & still further descent into raspy atonal blat... incredible in its own right!
creel pone press release...
this, by far the most deluxe creel pone edition yet, includes ::

1 x crystal-clear resealable polypropylene cd sleeve with a red / gold foil stamp affixed to the exterior
1 x double-sided six-color inkjet-printed hand-cut glossy-photo-stock booklet
1 x double-sided six-color inkjet-printed hand-cut glossy-photo-stock insert
1 x 12-page laser-printed libretto-booklet
2 x four-color inkjet-printed compact disc recordables in high-density round-bottom cd sleeves

plus ::

1 x bonus four-color inkjet-printed three inch compact disc recordable in a separate three inch plastic wallet-sleeve and a double-sided six-color inkjet-printed hand-cut matte-stock booklet !!!

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$24.25

new to stock as of
may 8th, 2008

threads:
1960s-electronic
1980s-electronic
electro-acoustic-composition
musique-concrète

die schachtel (italy) #ds 16 cd

pietro grossi “musicautomatica” compact disc

  • progetto 2-3 (14:19) 1961
  • collage (13:57) 1968
  • unicum (28:05) 1985
click the play button to hear an excerpt of "collage"
may 2008 release ; yikes; has it really been 5 years since die schachtel initially unleashed the lp version of this, their debut release, onto an unsuspecting public? looks like it (kind of depressing in a way ... feels like yesterday ...).

it only fits that they’d follow up (eventually) w/this cd reissue, coming in a lovely metallic-printed box (similar to the cd-set that comes w/the bertoncini book) containing a 24-page booklet (in english and italian) documenting grossi’s time @ the rai, including the follow essays :: “music and automatization : acquisitions and expectations (1969)”, “about computer music (1969)”, “the ‘instant zero’ of music (1985)”, and a biography ...

regarding aforementioned lp version, i had this to say back in may of 2003 ::

progetto 2-3 (1961) is the sort of resonant long-tone piece that ascends me high into an alpha-state. “...this is the origina of progetto 2-3, six sonic bands whose interval relations were obtained by dividing into equal parts the intervals of extreme frequencies. these were arbitrarily assigned to the first band, and then calculated through a specific computer algorithm. the modality and succession order of intermediate frequencies, like pauses between bands, were controlled through combinatorial calculation procedures: combination, permutation, position, etc...” beautiful grainy tonalities, very hard to fathom this being a ‘relic’...

collage (1968) is, for me, the prize of the record... a murky tape & computer construct of almost biblical proportions. what little of grossi’s music i’d heard until now (mostly later/80s pieces) didn’t quite prepare me for this clangorous freakout ... resembling xenakis’ “diamorphoses” on uppers. a key piece from a historical perspective (very little of the milan studio rai output is currently available) ...

unicum (1985) is a side-long gestural piece from a few years later incorporating muted computer-generated fibbles & all manner of mystery noises in an extended trance-out.

i’ll say it again; “collage” is w/o compare; one of the noisiest/racket-oriented bits of early tape-music & pretty much needs to be heard by any acolyte of the early-noise spec. very glad die schachtel have come forward w/this mass-market edition for any/all to experience; again or anew. highly recommended !!!
die schachtel press release...

the long awaited cd edition of our first vinyl release ever (2003), will finally give a wider audience the opportunity to listen to some of the most intense compositions of this visionary and uncompromising composer.

minimalist before the minimalists, pioneer of computer music, founder of the studio of phonology of florence, visual artist and hacker ahead of his time. this was pietro grossi, a larger-than-life italian composer who questioned the concept of musical authorship and the idea of personal artistic expression: “a piece is not only a work (of art), but also one of the many “works” one can freely transform: everything is temporary, everything can change at any time”. “ideas are not personal anymore, they are open to every solution, everybody could use them”.

previous artist:
 walter gropius 		...and that's everything in stock featuring pietro grossi.
(why not take a look at the previous and next artists?)		next artist:
 david gross 
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