March 8th, 2010
Alvin Lucier is a composer of experimental music who has been working since the 1960s in a solo setting, and with such cutting edge groups as the Sonic Arts Union, which also claimed as members fellow ’60s electronic music pioneers (and your basic, everyday legends) Robert Ashley, David Behrman and Gordon Mumma. Lucier mainly works with materials and processes that investigate acoustic phenomena and human perception of sound. He has been teaching at Wesleyan University since 1970.
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Posted by Arcane Candy
July 21st, 2008
This is a reissue of an utterly original and classic work for voice and tape that was composed in 1969, recorded in 1980 and finally appeared on CD in 1990. The premise is simple and the outcome is fully out there: Alvin Lucier recites a short speech into one tape recorder, plays it back into an empty room which is recorded again by another tape recorder, and repeats the process back and forth until—38 repetitions later—the resonant frequencies of the room have gradually transformed the spoken words into an unrecognizable and transcendent cloud of ambient beauty. “By the end of the piece, with it’s magnificent ringing of architectural space, one sometimes forgets that it was a calm human voice that set the room into oscillation.”
“I Am Sitting In A Room is inextricably linked to notions of ‘home’—of a room rather than a concert hall, of sitting rather than laboring, of speaking rather than singing, of literally being in the right place at the right time. I Am Sitting In A Room conveys this sense of rightness in a way that transcends the mechanism, phenomena and text of the piece. It pulls the listener along with a process that, whether understandable or not, seems perfectly natural, totally fascinating, intensely personal and poignantly musical.”—Nicolas Collins
Label: Lovely Catalog Number: LCD 1013 Format: CD Packaging: Jewel case Tracks: 1 Total Time: 45:21 Country: United States Released: 1990 Related Artists: Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Gordon Mumma More: Official, Wikipedia
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Posted by Arcane Candy