First reissue since its initial 1969 release of New York minimalism and drone pioneers La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela's first full-length album, popularly known as "The Black Record" or "The Black Album".
La Monte Young began his music studies in Los Angeles and later Berkeley, California before relocating to New York City in 1960, where he became a primary influence on Minimalism, the Fluxus movement and performance art through his legendary compositions of extended time durations and the development of just intonation and rational number based tuning systems.
With wife and collaborator, artist Marian Zazeela, they would formulate the composite sound environments of the Dream House.
Seeing reissue for the first time since its initial 1969 release, Young and Zazeela's first full-length album is often referred to as "The Black Record" due to Zazeela's stunning cover design, complete with the composer's liner notes in elegant hand-lettered script.
Side one was recorded in 1969 (on the date and time indicated by the title) at the gallery of Heiner Friedrich in Munich, where Young and Zazeela premiered their Dream House sound and light installation. Featuring Young and Zazeela's voices against a sine wave drone, the recording is a section of the longer composition Map of 49's Dream the Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery (begun in 1966 as a sub-section of the even larger work The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys, which was begun in 1964 with Young's group The Theatre of Eternal Music). According to Young, the raga-like melodic phrases of his voice were heavily influenced by his future teacher, the Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath.
Side two, recorded in Young and Zazeela's NYC studio in 1964, is a section of the longer composition Studies in the Bowed Disc. This composition is an extended, highly abstract noise piece for bowed gong (gifted by sculptor Robert Morris). The liner notes explain that the live performance can be heard at 33 and 1/3 RPM, but may also be played at any slower speed down to 8 and 1/3 RPM for turntables with this capacity.
La Monte Young (born 1935 in Bern, Idaho) is an American composer, musician, and performance artist. Recognized as one of the first American minimalist composers, best known for his exploration of sustained tones, close to the experimental music of
John Cage in the 1960s, he is a central figure in
Fluxus and post-war avant-garde music.
Marian Zazeela (1940-2024) was an American artist, painter and musician. She was a member of the 1960s lengendary experimental music collective Theatre of Eternal Music, founded with her husband
La Monte Young,
Angus MacLise, and Billy Name, and which has included John Cale,
Tony Conrad,
Terry Riley, Garrett List, Jon Gibson, Jon Hassell,
Rhys Chatham, Alex Dea, Terry Jennings...
