September 2024; the final title in this month's 7-part whirlwind-wave of rééditions, here reuniting the 1970 Heliodor issue of "An Avalanche" & "Suite For Two Pianos And Tape" with their far more obscure 1979 issue on David Cope's Capra (see [CP 194-194.5 CD]) imprint, where they're joined with Barton Cummings' performance of "Malta, For Tuba And Tape" (the former with "Nightmare Music (1961)", "Suite For Two Pianos And Tape (1966)", & "Computer Music For Percussion And Tape (1968)" of course!) As with the different issues of the Steve Birchall "Reality Gates" LP (see: [CP 045 CD]) the takes here of the common pieces appears to be unique, so the C.P. P.T.B. have decided to include everything across two discs! A frankly incredible wealth of Noise-addled "American" Tape Music created in its 1960s halcyon-wave, as prescient as Robert Ashley's "Wolfman" & Martirano's "L's G.A." & "Underworld" in capturing just-pre psychedelic-era Electronic Horror!

Great to see this particular title of purely electronic pieces by Lejaren Hiller in the series; we last heard from him via the piece "Vocalise" on Creel Pone #039, "Electronic Music, Experimental Studios In Prague, Bratislava, Munich ..." but this particular collection, specifically including the otherwise unavailable early tape-music piece "Nightmare Music" (1961), gets into an area of his work that veers straight into the same text-and-electronic-sound miasma as such C.P. classics as Anestis Logothetis' "Fantasmata 1960", Dieter Kaufmann's "Bildnis Einer Frau Im Spiegel", and especially Salvatore Martirano's "L's GA."

Hiller was a prolific composer of Electronic & Computer Music, founding the University of Illinois Experimental Music Studios in 1958 & perhaps most famously collaborating with John Cage on the insane multimedia barrage "HPSCHD" (1967-69). The recording industry was kind to Hiller, who saw his work often spread across multiple pressings on CRI, Deutsche Grammophon's domestic Heliodor imprint, Nonesuch, Wergo, and even our beloved Orion & Spectrum labels. Following a pair of Heliodor rundowns of Electronic & Computer Music from the University of Illinois, showcasing the work of faculty & composers-in-residence such as Herbert Brün, Kenneth Gaburo, Charles Hamm, Salvatore Martirano (see the newly-reconfigured [CP 006 CD] for these), Leonard Isaacson, Robert Baker, and Hiller, the label went forward with this all-Hiller program of four extended pieces:

"An Avalanche" (For Pitchman, Prima-Donna, Player Piano, Percussionist, And Pre-Recorder Playback;  1968) wraps wry, often humorous preparation-chatter, operatic warble, and stray percussive klang into a meta-exercise, reminding me of Jacques Lejeune's "tune up" piece "Petite Suite." "Nightmare Music (from 'Time Of The Heathen' For Tape Alone; 1961) is the record's tour-de-force, 10 minutes of prescient tape-sound rhythms, Shepard-Tone blooms, and harsh, discordant textures assembled at a breakneck pace, pre-dating the majority of the key pieces in this particular nexus by a good decade.

On the flip, there's "Suite For Two Pianos And Tape" (1966) merges ongoing, incongruous barrelhouse with synthesized, flitting ring-modulated squeak before erupting into a halo of Cecil Taylor -lineage "88 tuned drums" bash & erratic hollering. Finally, "Computer Music For Percussion And Tape" (1968) settles into the de rigeur pointillist bleep, occasionally settling into some rather jaunty straight-time phrasing. 

This Creel Pone reproduction, long ago nominated, acted upon recently, comes complete with a replica of an apropos clipping from the May 17th, 1970 issue of The New York Times citing "Avalanche" for its "electronic camp", "Nightmare Music" is clarified as a "score for a film about a former bomber pilot's mental state"