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 Sound UbuWeb |
Harry Bertoia | USA (1915-1978)  Harry Bertoia main page on UbuWeb Sound
Space Voyage / Echoes Of Other Times [Sonambient 1023] (1978) The two pieces included on this early LP opened Important Records' essential 2016 compilation "Sonambient", and are now presented in their original form. Casting our mind back to when these records were originally released, it must have sounded completely out on its own. Bertoia was already in his 60s when the albums came out, a successful and well-known furniture designer who used his popularity to fund a career as a sculptor. He collected sound sculptures made of long rods attached to flat bases, and called "Sonambient" works, in his Pennsylvania barn. These sculptures were played like instruments to make the series of 11 Sonambient releases, of which "F/W 1023" is the first. So for some listeners 'Space Voyage' may have been their introduction to Bertoia's sound; aptly titled, it sounds like a rocket launching with a mass of metallic echo and resonant drone building into a microtonal wall of eerily harmonic sound. Bertoia's music sounds both modern and ancient, like an orchestra of santur players in a deep cavern, or an underwater gamelan orchestra, as much as a digital synthesis system, or a complex Max/MSP patch. 
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