CARY, TRISTRAM - Soundings: Electroacoustic Works 1955-1996

Tristram Cary has been working in the field of electroacoustic music for half a century. This set of 2 CDs presents a personal selection of his landmark contributions to the genre, spanning his career as a composer in London and Australia. Best known for the original music for the Dr. Who television series, Cary here shows what an astonishingly versatile composer he is. The first disc features all early analog works, from 1955 to 1978, including: "Continuum" (for stereo tape, 1969; "Continuum is about time, seen as stretching endlessly in both directions from our position as we move through it. The continuum sound is a mesh of over forty pitches, undulating at different amounts and speeds, and all the material from the piece is extracted from this dense and flexible cluster."); "Suite -- Leviathan99" (for stereo tape, 1972); "3 4 5 -- A study In Limited Resources for Stereo Tape" (1967); "Suite -- The Children of Lir" (for mono tape, 1959/66); "Birth is Life is Power is Death is God is..." (for stereo tape, 1967); "Suite -- The Japanese Fishermen" (recreated for stereo tape from 78 RPM mono acetate discs, 1955/96); "Narcissus" (for flute and two tape recorders, 1968); "Steam Music" (for quad tape, 1978). Disc 2 features computer music from 1979-1996: "Nonet" (1979); "Soft Walls" (1980); "Sine City II" (1979/96); "Black, White & Rose" (for marimba, gongs, woodblocks and tape, 1991); "Three Clockpieces" (1983/96); "Trellises" (1984); "The Impossible Piano" (for sequencer and samples piano, 1994; "a small tribute to the astonishing player piano works of Conlon Nancarrow, using precisely calculated durations in a computer sequencer as a substitute for Nancarrows punched paper rolls")." - Tall Poppies.\r\n