Name: Criss Cross / Hanover
Brand: Alvin Lucier

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

BLACKTRUFFLE033

Colour

Black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2023-04-14

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Tax rate GB

Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

880319874710

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Total Cap

Black LP

Artist

Alvin Lucier

Genre GB

Electronic

Label GB

Black Truffle

Alvin Lucier was a composer, writer, and visual artist born on May 14, 1931 in Nashua, New Hampshire. He studied at Yale and Brandeis University and received a Fulbright Scholarship to spend two years in Rome. From 1962 to 1970, he taught at Brandeis where he conducted the Brandeis University Chamber Chorus dedicated to new music.
Lucier was a pioneer in various aspects of music composition and performance. His innovations included notating performers' physical gestures, utilizing brain waves in live performances, generating visual imagery through sound in vibrating media, and creating room acoustics for musical purposes. He extensively showcased his sound installations across the United States, Europe, and Asia while also contributing articles to books and periodicals. One of his notable works is the book "Chambers," co-authored with Douglas Simon and published by Wesleyan University Press.
Artists similar to Alvin Lucier include *Alvin Curran*, *Pauline Oliveros*, *Bernard Parmegiani*, *François Bayle*, *Robert Ashley*, *David Behrman*, *Vladimir Ussachevsky*, *Phill Niblock*, *Tod Dockstader*, *James Tenney*, *Morton Subotnick*, *Luc Ferrari*, *Morton Feldman*, Éliane Radigue', 'Ingram Marshall', 'Karlheinz Stockhausen

Black Truffle Records is an Australian experimental/improv/noise/abstract/etc. music label, founded in 2009 by Oren Ambarchi. Launched with a couple of Ambarchi's long out-of-print vinyl reissues on CD, Black Truffle then released a remastered version of seminal 'Afternoon Tea' collaborative album with new artwork. The most well-known releases on the label are three albums exclusively produced for Black Truffle by Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke, and Oren Ambarchi trio. Other notable collaborations that Ambarchi recorded for his own label include 'The Mortimer Trap' with Thomas Brinkmann and 'Cat's Squirrel' with Masami Akita.

All releases on Black Truffle feature artworks designed by either Stephen O'Malley or Lasse Marhaug.

The French black truffle is considered the finest of the edible fungi and has a place in gastronomy alongside saffron, caviar, foie gras, and the finest wines. Widely regarded as the jewel of French cooking, it is prized for its unique flavor and intoxicating aroma. At Black Truffle Records, our resident chef has discovered that finding this "diamond of the kitchen" requires using a divining stick while facing into the sun.

Black Truffle is honoured to present the premier recordings of two recent works by legendary American experimental composer Alvin Lucier. A friend and contemporary of pioneers like Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Gordon Mumma, and Christian Wolff, Lucier has been crafting elegant explorations of the behavior of sound in physical space since the 1960s. 

Demonstrating the restless creative drive of an artist now in his 80s, the two recent works presented here both feature the electric guitar, an instrument Lucier has just recently begun to explore. In Criss-Cross, Lucier’s first composition for electric guitars, two guitarists using e-bows sweep slowly up and down a single semitone, beginning at opposite ends of the pitch range. The piece is a model of simplicity, exemplifying Lucier’s desire not to ‘compose’ in the conventional sense, but rather to eliminate everything that ‘distracts from the acoustical unfolding of the idea’. In this immaculately controlled performance of Criss-Cross by Oren Ambarchi and Stephen O’Malley, (for whom the piece was written in 2013), a seemingly simple idea creates a rich array of sonic effects – not simply beating patterns, which gradually slow down as the two tones reach unison and accelerate as they move further apart, but also the remarkable phenomenon of sound waves spinning in elliptical patterns through space between the two guitar amps.

In the comparatively lush Hanover, Lucier draws inspiration from the beautiful photograph that provides the LP with its cover, an image of the Dartmouth Jazz Band taken in 1918 featuring Lucier’s father on violin. Using the instrumentation present in the photograph, Lucier creates an unearthly sound world of sliding tones from violin, alto and tenor saxophones, piano, vibraphone (bowed) and three electric guitars (which take the place of the banjos present in the photograph). Waves of slow glissandi create thick, complex beating patterns, gently punctuated by repeated single notes from the piano. The result is a piece that, like much of Lucier’s instrumental music, is simultaneously both unperturbably calm and constantly in motion. Stunning LP design by Stephen O’Malley including an inner sleeve with a portrait of Alvin Lucier by Kris Serafin.

Criss Cross / Hanover

Music GB