Alga Marghen

PALESTINE, CHARLEMAGNE - Sound 1

As the title well underlines, Sound 1, electronic sonority is a starting point in Charlemagne Palestines research for the Golden Sonority. Previously unpublished, this radical and fundamental work has now been released on LP record in collaboration with the New Media Dept. of Centre Pompidou (National Museum of Modern Art) in Paris for the first Oeuvres Sonores event, December 15th, 2008. Charlemagne Palestine started to dream of an expressive, continuous, ever-moving, ever-changing sound-form; an enormous sonorous 3-dimensional sculptural canvas in mid-air, using electronically-produced sounds. At first, he began experiments with simple sine tone generators, emitting the purest sound waves without any overtones. Then, gradually, with access to Moog and arps, he constructed sounds using the sine/sawtooth/square wave oscillators in a fluid, ever-changing mix of adding or filtering overtones and white noise to create sonorities constantly changing timbres and weight. Palestine experimented in this way from 1964 till 1974 in NYC and then, in California. Finally, he assembled his own drone machine of 16 ultra stable oscillators designed by Serge Tcherepnin and 4 band pass filters designed by Donald Buchla. He would build up a sound, oscillator by oscillator, then add ever-so-slightly to the oscillator input, tiny increments of white noise that would gradually make the sounds thicker and thicker, until they were immense, sacred machines humming like gargantuan Tibetan bees. Charlemagne played them very, very loud, making all the room and objects in it resonate, while outside all was quiet and sleeping. He worked like a painter with a palette and a canvas and he mixed and added and mixed and added over, entire nights, mixing, adding, and then lying on the mattress and listening and fine-tuning. Finally, at a certain point, after several nights, the sonority seemed ready to record. Hed put on the tape, prepare the tape machine with the proper level as not to overload it, and record the texture. This 1-sided LP was issued in an edition limited to 500 copies. Includes a 25-page program booklet, including an essay by Charlemagne Palestine and artwork by John Giorno. -Alga Marghen. Last copy, has corner ding.

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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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