CARLES SANTOS-VOICETRACKS, LP, 1981, SPAIN

A multi-media artist with a wide remit, Santos' initial exposure within the music world was as a pianist and interpreter of the modern classical canon, but his incipient vocal antics (initially staged between piano pieces) would soon take on a life of their own and cement his reputation as both a master avant vocalist and a complete nutter. Unlike most who operate in this sphere, Santos moves easily between the distinct universes of both sound poetry and free improv vocals, sparring elsewhere with the likes of Shelley Hirsch, David Moss and Greetje Bijma. The work at hand though is both more formal and more idiosyncratic than his collaborative affairs; Santos' gibbering, spluttering glossolalian fits of absurdist vocal genius here being tightly choreographed and modulating through incremental stages in a way that both suggests the demented warbling trills and whisper-to-a-shout histrionics of Area vocalist Demetrio Stratos' solo albums and the repetitive and cellularly expanding vocal theatrics of San Francisco performance/multi-media artist Michael Peppe's Behaviormusik performances.  It's breathtaking and peerless work and it's also managed to reduce to fits of helpless laughter pretty much everyone I know (though usually in direct proportion to the amount of intoxicants ingested).

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