Name: Pulse Music
Brand: John McGuire

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

UW36CD

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Colour

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

Gatefold CD Wallet. Tipped-in Booklet

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Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2022-04-29

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Tax rate GB

Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

769256795527

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Total Cap

1 / CD / Extended format: No / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

UW36LP

Black

2022-12-16

0744790142860

2 / Black / LP

Artist

John McGuire

Genre GB

Modern Composition

Label GB

Unseen Worlds

A record label releasing quality editions of unheralded and revolutionary, yet accessible, avant garde music.

Welcome to Unseen Worlds, a record label dedicated to bringing you the best in avant garde music. Our mission is to release high-quality editions of groundbreaking and innovative music that may have gone unnoticed by mainstream audiences. We believe that experimental music should be both challenging and accessible, pushing boundaries while still being enjoyable to listen to.

At Unseen Worlds, we are passionate about discovering hidden gems and showcasing the work of talented artists who are pushing the boundaries of what is possible in music. From electronic compositions to contemporary classical pieces, our catalog spans a wide range of genres within the avant garde realm. We carefully curate each release to ensure that it meets our high standards for artistic excellence and innovation.

Presented together for the first time, American composer John McGuire’s Pulse Music series (1975-1979) blurs the popular narrative that Minimalism was a reaction against Europe’s angular, intellectual, inscrutable high-modernism. McGuire, born in California, studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles and UC Berkeley before going to Europe to study with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Gottfried Michael Koenig. His compositions lock serialism’s warped geometries onto an evenly spaced grid, perfectly preserving serial music’s multi-dimensionality while smoothing its wildest disjunctures and sharpest angles. If serialism is Montreal’s Habitat 67 modular housing complex, McGuire’s Pulse Music compositions are the primary-colored grids of Le Corbusier’s L’Habitation apartment complex — an exuberant expression of the same materials and principles.

Every layer of pulses is made distinct through its timbre, register, and tempo. We hear them as a plurality, organized like stars in the sky. Every so often the sky rotates and the stars appear in a different arrangement. Our ear naturally starts to draw connections and, as it sweeps between one layer and another, what was discrete becomes continuous. Pulses become flows; quantitative reality becomes qualitative experience.

Pulse Music

Music GB