Important

V/A - The Harmonic Series Volume 2

"A collection of long-form works in just intonation by Kali Malone, Duane Pitre, Catherine Lamb, Tashi Wada, Byron Westbrook, and Caterina Barbieri. Each artist occupies an entire side of the collection's three LPs. Curated by Duane Pitre, Important Records returns with its second volume of compiled works in just intonation. The Harmonic Series Volume 2, issued as a triple-LP collection, features a series of long-form compositions by six of the most important emerging voices of contemporary experimental music. Unlike equal temperament, which equally divides an octave into 12 fixed notes, just intonation utilizes intervals of whole number ratios to determine tonal positions. It results in a highly individualized tonal language and holds the potential for more nuanced relationships and striking, sympathetic resonances. Rooted in ideas that trace their way across the last 2500 years, just intonation lays at the foundation for numerous Indian, Persian, and East Asian musical traditions. It was reintroduced into western music during the 20th century by composers like Harry Partch, Ben Johnston, Lou Harrison, James Tenney, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young. An interest in just intonation has continued to swell following the appearance of The Harmonic Series in 2009 inspiring Pitre to curate a second compilation. Kali Malone's "Pipe Inversions" -- played by Malone on a small pipe organ, joined by Isak Hedtjärn on bass clarinet -- belongs to a larger body of microtonal organ works that have increasingly placed the composer at the forefront of contemporary minimalism and drone music. Across the length of Duane Pitre's "Three for Rhodes" -- a chamber piece for "unknown instrumentation" - deconstructed rhythms and melodic fragments swell in a dance of harmonic interplay, rising and falling within the work's engrossing architectural complexity. Catherine Lamb's "inter sum" -- one of a tiny number of available works to encounter the composer and renowned violist working on synthesizer -- endeavors to break the visualization of harmony as a vertical reality, rendering it multidimensionally in space. A canon for eight-violins played by Marc Sabat, Tashi Wada's "Midheaven (Alignment Mix)" -- guided by the internal logic of its tuning system -- shape-shifts into an elegantly poetic form of musical conceptualism. Byron Westbrook's "Memory Phasings" -- composed and recorded on a combination of computer controlled modular synthesizers and a Yamaha TX802 -- employs the ratios of just intonation as harmonic building blocks for texture. Deploying just intonation as a means for psycho-physiological exploration, Caterina Barbieri's "Firmamento" -- composed for synthesizer -- deftly intervenes with the expectations of minimalism, durational music, and drone. Cut at Golden and pressed at RTI for maximum fidelity." - Important Records.
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After nearly a decade of false starts, multiple game plans veering off the rails, and a handful of shattered hopes and/or dreams, the odyssey is finally complete—the new Fusetron site is here.

This is the first phase of a multipart rollout that will span the next few months: the currently browsable stock includes miscellaneous new releases from the past 8+ months (we have a lot of catching up to do), plus approximately a third of our backstock. Note that we’ve reduced/slashed prices on many titles and will continue to do so in order to make room for new stock. We’ll also be expanding / tweaking / improving / debugging the site itself (for example, we still have work to do on the automated international postage system, not to mention the inevitable inventory discrepancies that come with transferring an ancient and massive database to a new system).

Over the next few months, as we take inventory, clean house, and delve into our storage, we will be uploading thousands of additional items, gradually, on a near-daily basis. This will include the majority of the LPs, as well as many titles, in all formats, once thought long-gone. Many currently “sold out” items are likely to resurface.

Finally, once our general backstock is up (probably in the next two or three months) we’ll begin making our extensive stockpile of rarities available online for the first time: tons of random out-of-print titles, "deadstock," warehouse finds, secondhand collectibles, etc., accumulated over the past few decades.

Frequent/returning customers will be getting early access to these items. Details to follow on how this will work (a priority mailing list? a 'frequent flyer'-like program?), but it will not be based on dollars spent. We want to reward those who consistently support us, especially in the discogs marketplace era (to those who show up trying to poach five copies of a one-off rarity, and nothing else, ever… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).

So—we suggest you take some time to dig through the site—even we’ve been surprised by what’s been turning up, and there’s much more to come.
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