Blume

LUCIER, ALVIN - Vespers

""This is the fulfillment of a dream for a new kind of music. There is nothing like Vespers in the literature of music. It is a completely new way of defining what music is, and the definition is given to us in a purely realized form." --Robert Ashley Alvin Lucier is among the most important, influential, and radical of the second generation of the post-war avant-garde composers. First released as Lucier's contribution to the Sonic Arts Union's lone LP, Electronic Sound (1972), Vespers is a work generated by two equal actors: the performers and the space that they occupy. Conceived following a chance encounter with hand-held echolocation technology "the Sondol", a pulse oscillator that emits short, sharp pulses at variable repetition speeds, producing echoes from the reflecting walls of a space to register relative location and orientation. Written as a poetic "prose score", for the realization of Vespers, each performer is equipped with a "Sondol" and asked to move blindfolded within a defined space, moving from one point to the next using only echolocation, taking what Lucier describes as "sound photographs" that reveal discrete details of the given area. Despite the radical leap it presented within the history of the sonic arts, Vespers was not the first of Lucier's works that began to specifically address the relation between sound, perception, and space. Chambers, composed the year before in 1968 and embedded with the wry humor which lingers below much of the composer's output, explored the theme on a brilliantly miniature scale. As a total work, Chambers contends with the relationship between the knowing and understanding of what we hear, our perception of the source of a sound, and its relation to space. When viewed in the immediate context of Vespers, it presents as an unexpected inversion of what was to come. While it plays on the relation of sight and the sonic actor, what is seen and unseen takes on a dynamically different role. For the realization of Chambers, battery-operated radios, tape recorders, and various kinds of electric toys are hidden in paper bags, shoes, kettles, a suitcase, and other small resonant spaces, which not only limit the perception of these object to their sounds alone, but take on the role of acoustic actors on the sounds within, each space becoming as individual and distinct as the object it contains. Newly designed obi-strip/insert with an introduction by Robert Ashley, liner notes by Bradford Bailey and Gaia Martino. 160 gram, dark blue vinyl; edition of 300." - Blume .
  • Sale
  • Regular price $27.00


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.
I understand these terms

Sale

Unavailable

Sold Out