FIRST, DAVID - Privacy Issues (Droneworks 1996-2009)

2010 release. Featuring Chris McIntyre and Peter Zummo, trombones; "Blue" Gene Tyranny, keyboards; and The Black Jackets Ensemble. "This was something unexpected and truly different: pulsing electronic textures that derived their rhythm from the beating patterns of closely-tune pitches -- as if Alvin Lucier and Philip Glass had gone on a blind date to CBGBs... David put the beat in beating patterns" --from the liner notes by composer Nic Collins (on his initial exposure to Firsts music in 1987). This special and specially priced set (three CDs for the price of two) contains nine works composed between 1996 and 2009. "1996 was the beginning of a new period for me," says First. "I had spent the prior five or six years creating a lot of music for other players and larger ensembles -- culminating in 1995 with a couple of mountings of my opera, The Manhattan Book of the Dead. I was a little burned out on this and decided to return to a more personal, intimate format -- one that ended up including an even more extensive exploration of tunings, alternative compositional softwares and how my playing techniques interacted with these things. I think I just wanted to go deeper and have more control over the results. During the ensuing years Ive had a few pendulum swings -- forays into beat-oriented pop music with lyrics and vocals and, of course, the re-animation of my rock band from the late 70s -- The Notekillers. But Ive continued, through all of the changes, to maintain my grounding in my love of the drone and associated acoustical phenomena -- a love affair that began in my teenage psychedelic years and will, no doubt, be a most significant aspect of my music path for as long as I am at it. The tracks here represent almost every major work created from 1996 to the present and Im grateful that they will be heard by a wider swath of people than those who lived in NYC or happened to be at one of my touring performances during these years." - XI.