Gravity Adjusters Expansion Band - One,CD reissue,1973/2005,USA

Although the Gravity Adjusters Expansion Band (GAEB) started in 1967 they remain one of the long lost and underestimated groups that explored the areas of sound sculpture, improvisation, experimental music and free jazz. The group have their roots in playing in and around the San Francisco bay area, and finally recorded their first LP in Los Angeles. Free jazz drummer Lee Charlton seamlessly shifts the moods from jazzy phrasing into the far more abstracted ideas of the world of sound sculpture. It is this abstract world where the GAEB mostly reside, using the invented instruments of multi-media artist Richard Waters, many of whose percussive and bowed instruments incorporate water filled resonators to bend and tune the sound. This was their first LP “One”, which appeared in 1973 on Nocturne Records, a small Californian label. it would be the first of their 2 released album's, the second one appearing 8 years later. The music is totally spell binding and by gazing at the list of instruments deployed you can imagine in what territories the unit tend to dwell in: diatonic sound generator, bazooki, pipe drums, Aeolian space horn, synthesizer, waterphones, mytar, saws, bass violin, horizontal and upright phoniums, birdcalls, microtonal revolving sound generator, sgourd (?), superball mallets, water gong drums, log drums, springs, keyboards, assorted gourds, Princess oil can and more. So with these you can pretty much deduce that the sound of One is mainly percussive, but then again shagging this masterpiece of as just another rattling slab of a percussion record would be way too reductive. Instead, this is a sprawling exploration of ambient sound, very reminiscent of GAEB's sonic compatriots Taj Mahal Travelers and AMM,MEV. The Gravity Adjusters Expansion Band take percussive sounds and spread them way out, letting the overtones and reverberations shimmer and merge, so while these are still distinctly rhythmic arrangements, with plenty of tolling and chiming and ringing peppered with random bits of clatter and clang, the various sounds and their after affects create soft billows of background burble, muted melodic murmurs and all manner of sweetly sonorous and slow shifting soundscapes, each track a lush sonic exploration of bowed metals and vibrating strings, of objects both struck and stroked, a potential cacophony smoothed into lengthy dreamlike shimmers. So completely mesmerizing. Sealed copy, original press so they do not come any better than this one….

Absolutely stunning LP!

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sorry after a comment by wellrespected friend of the blog(seesselberg) i have to remove the link and re-direct you at Paradigm Discs webpage