Saturday, April 14, 2007

HENNING CHRISTIANSEN-ABSCHIEDSSYMPHONIE, LP, 1988, DENMARK




Obtained during a period in the 90's when tracking down obscure gallery edition albums (the sort of thing covered in the book Broken Music) seemed like a worthwhile pursuit, before one too many albums of guys rolling ballbearings around on gallery floors drove me toward more fruitful sonic pastures. This was one of the few keepers from that period, though. This live recording of deeply odd surrealist atmospheres is conjured from some pretty humble ingredients (spare detuned piano chords, open oxygen tank valves hissing and birds singing in contact miked cages, for starters) and realized by Christiansen, legendary fluxus artist Nam June Paik and (via telephone link) even more legendary visual/performance artist Joseph Beuys. Enigmatic and highly compelling work that is as difficult to parse as it is to deny.

Get it Here

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Eric,

Just as an FYI, the Henning Christiansen LP is also available here.

However, my guess is that your rip is FAR superior. Ubu encodes their MP3s around 160 to 192, I believe.

And I'm guessing yours is 256 or so.

THANKS SO MUCH for all these GREAT new posts this week (and weekend too!!!!)

kingpossum said...

The mighty Mutant is without question one of the most important and vital stations in the blogoshere. Bless you vdoandsound and all for exposing these otherwise unobtainable recordings and letting us all share in these truly incredible audio experiences.

Regards

Anonymous said...

Wow, thought this was going to be 'interesting' without necessarily being enjoyable, but it's actually really good - you post some amazing stuff up here, many thanks!

Anonymous said...

i like so much how henning christiansen always rework his recordings. at the end of the first side there's an amazing reworked part of symphony natura. and it think i'll never be tired of the beautiful mundane classical piano playing of nam june paik! Amazing record. Thank you for it. Do you have some of the more classical work of henning christiansen? like the duo fluxid, fluxyl or any other. I'd love to hear them! Any way thank you for everything you had done.