[CP 017 CD] Iowa Ear Music

This one’s certainly a mold-breaker; closer in spirit to Cage / Tudor’s “Indeterminacy” than the sort of bedroom solo composer / producer / performer LPs that have been the Creel Pone archetype thus far. Improvisors were set up in 4 different isolation booths in the studio in Iowa State University’s recording studio during the ‘67 - ’75 seasons; these simultaneously-ocurring sound-events captured in real time, then collaged via tape & electronic processing by the studio-head Michael Lytle afterwards (some of you may remember those Lytle / Cartwright LPs that turned up in the early 80s on various Recommended / Rec Rec imprints; same guy).

There are brief snatches of amazingly dense, if even inept Euro-style improvising, all dove-tailed with some great bits of zonked analogue electronics, vocal droning, and climactic, tape-speed warble free drumming (which, inexplicably erupts at one point into a reading of “Lonely Woman” for cavern-reverb trumpet and square-wave sequenced Moog bass !!!) My favorite thing about this LP is that no one piece stays in one place for longer than a few minutes until the chopping block is brought out and a static-feeling improv is fiercely juxtaposed against a blast of pitched up stereo-echo blast along the lines of “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving With a Pict” (i could go on…) 

It’s inspiring to know that this sort of free-wheeling electro-acoustic improv-tomfoolery was taking place even in the most midwestern of geographies during the early 70s; there are certainly echoes of the work of similarly-minded ensembles such as MEV, Il Gruppo Nuova Consonanza, and New Phonic Art, although natch this is considerably more ad-hoc/rough-around-the-edges. Fans of Mimaroglu & Hubbard’s “Sing Me a Song of Songmy” will find parallel here, even if it’s a rougher, a-political one.