La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, The Theatre Of Eternal Music* – Dream House 78'17"

🎶 Well well well oh well…🎶 Pt Ravi Shankar was once asked what he thought of western pop musos “ playing “ sitar answering “ ‘twould be a bit like asking Yehudi Menuhin what he thinks of the scraping sound produced by an African Pygmy “ playing “ the violin. Aside from the inherent racism in his statement presumably his point being to paraphrase “ you gotta be kidding right..?” Case in point: more than 30 years ago in response to interviewers question regarding study of North Indian Kirana gharana vocal music with Pandit Pran Nath ( master of breath ) Jon Hassell replied “ don’t believe the hype I never got past the alap Raag Tilang “. I appreciated his honesty. Likewise LMY and MZs’ “ vocal “ performances on this and so called black album. Clearly demonstrably neither can sing. Panditji must’ve played a cruel joke. The vocal on 78 17 might as well be a kazoo because that’s what it sounds like. Roll off the top frequencies upon playback? No discernible difference. Lissajous patterns side 2? Ha! Guess what there are none cuz it’s been mastered. A= 432khz not 440? Bollocks. Magenta vinyl artwork very nice but so what if not worth listening to. Perhaps the reason none of this stuff was rarely available is because surprise surprise not very good. The only way I could be more down on these releases is to imagine the extreme consumer remorse that anyone who paid hundreds back in the day for this sophomoric tosh must’ve experienced . In short dude’s full of shit regarding North Indian vocal music. Caveat emptor or Public enemys’ “ don’t believe the hype”. Save yer $. Bad art. D

Received my copy from Soundohm yesterday 😊 Can’t say anything about the quality though, my sound system is out of use for the moment 😬

Superior Viaduct will be reissuing this on January 26, 2024 (as per Boomkat).

Damn I wish I can get a copy of this for less than $100

They squeezed in 39 min on the first side. wow.

Pretty funny to see how many original copies of this have suddenly sprung up on the marketplace since the reissue superseded it. I understand the repress sounds a lot better which is fair enough, but it's queer to see how many people are watching the market hoping to shift things at the right time. On this occasion I think most have missed that window.

Two epic drone pieces. Side 2 needs to be played loud through a good system. As the sleeve notes say (reproduced above) - side 2 is pure sine wave music. One tone through one speaker and a different tone through the other. If you understand your physics then you will know that when the two tones collide in the room then you will get peaks and troughs. Basically this means that if you walk around the room while the disc is on it will appear to be louder in some parts, softer in others and sometimes practically disappear altogether. Sounds pretty goofy I know but it really works. With the side lasting nearly 40 minutes it really gives you time to get into it. Almost meditational you might say. Sine waves have no harmonic content so turn the treble right down while playing side 2 - it makes no difference to the music but reduces surface noise.
With each side being so long the fidelity was never going to be good on this record. Shandar pressings were a bit dodgy at the best of times. It doesn't really bother me but if you're a hi-fi nut or a cd fan craving absolute purity then don't get this record.
There's very little La Monte Young available on any format so this is a very rare album. The shop I got mine from had half a dozen copies or so... this is back in the late '70s. The guy in the shop did it for £2.50 (reduced from £3.50) because he said it was a bit crackly!