[CP 000.35 CD] Synergetic Sonorities, Electronic Essays +

This was the 35th title in the ca. 2003 "Proto Creel Pone" series, collecting the two compilations of Electronic Music (arguably the first Canadian-produced LPs of said) issued in 1968 on Marathon Music Inc.

These records have a fascinating lineage in the history of Canadian Experimental Music; after branching out from the legendary Montréal pressing plant Allied Record Corporation (who of course issued Intersystems' "Number One" & "Peachy" in 1967, then bpNichol's "Motherlove" & Nihilist Spasm Band's "No Record" the following year & legendary eponymous Psych raers by Plastic Cloud & Reign Ghost shortly thereafter via various micro-imprints including Allied, Paragon, Pentagon, etc.), General Manager Jack Boswell established Marathon Music Inc., issuing these two LPs as the label's initial offerings.

Working in catalogue-number order, the first disc covers the "Synergetic Sonorities" LP (MS 2110, 1969), which debuted a side-length piece of "Stereosonic listener participation music" by the Estonian-Canadian Composer Udo Kasemets & one of "Stereo Electronic music" by the ONCE Festival/Group co-founder George Cacioppo. While excerpts of the latter's pieces "Cassiopeia" (as performed by Gordon Mumma & Robert Ashley) & "Time On Time In Miracles" appear on the "Music From The ONCE Festival" compilation on Advance (see the prior "Advance" CP 000.XX title for those) it was here Cacioppo's Electronic Music was first aired, and "Holy Ghost Vacuum, Or America Faints" is a whopper of an electronic trance-out. Kasemets' "Cascando" echoes Ann Southam's blissed-out Electronic work from a few years later with a gorgeous, pause-pregnant sensibility these ekes maximum effect out of a seemingly simple set of held tones.

The first disc is augmented by a (different!) 1984 recording of "Cassiopeia" as performed by Marilyn Shrude, Burton Beerman, & David Marias (all three on "Tape" & Shrude additionally on piano) & issued on the Access-label compilation "New Music Festival 4" along with (read on) the bonus of Istvan Anhalt's "Electronic Composition No. 2 ("Sine Nomine II")" from the career-spanning RCI "Anthology Of Canadian Music" box (the liners for all three of the Anhalt pieces here are, just barely, legible in the sixth panel's lower half). 

The second disc, covering the "Electronic Essays" LP (MS 2111, 1968) opens with Pauline Oliveros' live-played, whistle-register "Jar Piece"; only her third issued work after debuting via the David Behrman -produced "New Sounds In Electronic Music" via his Odyssey "Music Of Our Time" sub-series (see [CP 056-057-058 CD] for the promotional M.O.O.T. single) the prior year, alongside Steve Reich's now-canonic "Come Out" & Richard Maxfield's "Night Music". Captured during the summer of 1966 at the University of Toronto's Electronic Music Studio, it's an incredible tour-de-force of analogue oscillator combinations utilizing the Moog 900 system & presages much of Oliveros' "Number" piefes. This is followed by two purely Electronic "Student" pieces by Quebecois Composer John Rea (which led the C.P. P.T.B. down a long rabbit-hole; ultimately none of the other work of Rea's issued over the following decades on a coterie of Canadian compilations even holds a candle & we're sparing you most of this here) leading into the two "Electronic Compositions" by Anhalt; "Electronic Composition No. 3 ("Birds And Bells")" & "Electronic Composition No. 4 ("On The Beach")"

All-in, this is one of the more exhaustive (exhausting!) titles in the P.C.P. program, the results on months (years!) of research & tracking-down of stray regional compilations; one of the all-timers, for sure!