Blume

EASTMAN, JULIUS - Crazy Nigger

Restocked."It's little wonder that Julius Eastman (who died in 1990 under unexplained circumstances), remained the supreme underground composer. He was Afro-American and gay, a composer who rocked the cerebral world of process music with his explosions of free improvisation. Crazy Nigger is the first time any of Eastman's music has been available on vinyl, and is one of three extended pieces for four pianos, along with Gay Guerrilla and Evil Nigger, written and performed around 1980. All three works generate their epic soundscapes through adamantly restated patterns and interlocking canons, not fragmenting, but preaching urgent truths. To quote the brilliant Mary Jane Leach liners: "He wrote what can be categorized as minimal music, but also wrote 'post-minimal' music -- before minimal music was fully established." His pieces straddle both styles of minimal music; rhythmic/pulse-driven music (Steve Reich and Philip Glass) and spectral drone music (La Monte Young and Phill Niblock). There is a flexibility that lends an organic feel to his music, a muscularity missing in a lot of other music from that time; with the re-emergence of this powerful music, a missing gap in the history of contemporary music has been filled. Not released commercially upon their recording, they were instead shared on cassettes, copied and passed from one admirer to another. Unlike today's instant access to music, at that time each new copy represented a time commitment, since it took as long to copy as its playing time, while also removing itself further from the original recording with a resultant deterioration in sound quality. The three pieces occupy a high point in Eastman's oeuvre, the culmination of his mature style. Crazy Nigger is a sprawling sonic study, the last section exploring canonic form both harmonically and rhythmically, using the same process as James Tenney's Spectral Canon, but notated in a more intuitive way. Offering extensive liner notes by Leach and Bradford Bailey, this is a seminal work by one of the most important, but neglected, American composers of the 1970s and '80s, returning to the light once more. Not only is Crazy Nigger an entire rethinking of minimalism, but it ferociously blows the doors of what classical music can be seen to be. Mastering by Giuseppe Ielasi. Includes printed inner sleeve housing a Nagaoka anti-static record sleeve, plus obi-style original insert in a fold-out outer sleeve. 180 gram, color vinyl; Edition of 300." - Blume.
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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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