One from the archives. Late 70's / early 80's vintage electronic music created on classic 2nd-generation commercial synths (ARP 2600, OB-8 etc.) recorded and mixed on a Tascam Portastudio 144 cassette deck. School doesn't get any older!

6 MP3 Songs in this album (21:27) !
Related styles: Avant Garde: Electronic Avant-Garde, Electronic: Industrial, Type: Experimental

People who are interested in Psychic TV Throbbing Gristle should consider this download.


Details:
Let Ω=Ï Ï where Ï=λx.x x

Streaming audio of an album of electronic, er, um, music -- that's right, music -- composed, performed and recorded truly circa 1980. What does this stuff have to with the classic definition of a well-known formula from computability theory? Nothing, really, except that I was studying formal linguistics and symbolic logic at UCLA at the time that I composed this stuff and also the techniques I employed in creating some of this music included sending feedback from the signal path to the control path of the ARP 2600 reminiscent of the self-referential definition of Ω.

Respect the patch cords! They made it possible to do things like route the signal output of a VCO (Voltage Controlled Oscillator) into the control input of a SAH (Sample and Hold) unit supplying the input voltage to the VCO such that the "melody" was generated via a feedback process of sufficient complexity that the result could be considered stochastic even though it was essentially non-random.

As with the patch cords, analog tape recording allowed for all manner of rules bending. A cassette tape had four tracks: two stereo tracks on the "A" side and two on the "B" side. The Portastudio allowed you to record on all four tracks individually or simultaneously via it's four-channel mixer. Some of the pieces here were created by recording one or more tracks with the "A" side up, then laying down additional tracks with the "B" side up meaning that the tape was moving in opposite directions at the time the different tracks were laid down, thus making some tracks time-reversed relative to the others.

Feel the lo-fi love!