Overview
This award-winning U.K. electro-acoustic composer originally released this recording in the late '70s and was groundbreaking in his pursuit of the genre and one of the few English academic composers working with electronics at the time. This Paradigm CD is a reissue of the famed 1979 LP with four additional pieces never before released. Beach Regularity is an excerpt from a day-long happening in which the composer performed with an ensemble that featured saxophonist Lynn Dobson, avant-tuba player Melvyn Poore, vocalist Poppy Holden, and clarinet improviser Robin Coombes. This performance was designed somewhat like a social intervention, where the musicians performed in conjunction with tape-music and electronics broadcast from small portable stereo systems scattered along the English seaside. Four short sections make up Menagerie in a display of some of the most sophisticated electro-acoustic music of the time, and the final piece added to this CD is a solo vocal work entitled "Vocalise," which is a spontaneous-sounding improvisation. This collection combines the influence of free-improvisation, electronics, and modern composition techniques into a unified and highly developed avant-garde music. An important composer working on the fringes of numerous genres, Trevor Wishart extraordinary skill is exhibited well on this CD reissue, as most of his recordings are extremely obscure self-released LPs. ~ Skip Jansen, All Music Guide