After some preliminary research, the 2003 CD version of The Harmony Of The World seems a different beast than the vinyl counterpart discussed in the link above, based on noting differing track listings. So without further ado, here is a temporary zip file link to a direct vinyl rip of the original The Harmony Of The World LP:
(This link will be yanked immediately should either the CD turn out to be the same as the record, or the current authors make contact and request it be taken down.)
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Fear of music is for those of little faith. Many have protested and/or boycotted certain musicians for decades, mainly as a vehicle with which to project their beliefs onto others -- in a way to compensate for their lack of faith. While many fear certain musicians because these listeners are sensitive human beings, either unsure or unaware of their own faith.
The use of fear, shock, grotesqueness, and macabre in music has a history as long as music itself. It's silly to argue that music made by Alice Cooper, Marilyn Manson, Geto Boys, or Throbbing Gristle is a product of death -- the state which humans naturally fear the most. Anything that can growl, walk around, and make sounds is certainly alive. For more imaginative listeners or viewers, these artists may be considered "undead." But it's impossible that this music is the direct byproduct of death itself.
No matter how comfortable or disturbing one's music is, there is discernible humanity in the output. Humanity exists even in songs with highly disturbing subject matter and delivery -- such as Throbbing Gristle's "Hamburger Lady", as one example.
The Harmony Of The World is no exception. The 1979 record's liner notes clearly give credit to professors Willie Ruff, John Rodgers, and sound consultant Mark Rosenberg. Human presences are clearly established.
However, the album is a unique example of structural generative music -- as in music that is generated by a non-human system dictated by analytic theories. In this case, the data was collected from the final chapter of a 1619 book called Harmonices Mundi by Johannes Kepler. Ruff and Rodgers used the data collected by Kepler in combination with modern techniques (by 1979 standards) to synthesize the looping sounds of each of the planets in our Solar System.
So why argue that The Harmony Of The World is the creepiest record ever?
Because the composers of this record knew exactly what they were doing.
They didn't seek out to trigger any specific emotions in the listener, at least as stated on record. They didn't inject any human aesthetics into this recording, other than the use of data collected by one human being, Johannes Kepler -- who had long been dead -- and the instruction of the sound engineer, whose role was to be a robot in practice. Most importantly, Ruff and Rodgers made this record an analogy of a complex, conflated harmony that no human could muster.
There is nothing good or evil in The Harmony Of The World. There are no major dynamic shifts in the long-form tracks on this record. The Harmony Of The World exhibits, in rawest form, the mundane reality that no matter how much joy or pain or living or dying one goes through, our planets will continue to revolve around our sun producing this harmony for millions of years to come.
It's highly ironic that the human impulse to communicate with music that has no traits of humanity at base brings out fear -- arguably the most human impulse of all.
One could imagine if this record was his or her first generative music discovery, he or she could experience an existential nightmare, should he or she try to project a traditional author or performer or composer to music like this.
Going further, imagine if he or she had elaborate and preconceived ideas of the afterlife. How horrifying this record would sound.
The Harmony Of The World was the first record I ever bought. I was only 8 years old, and the 25 cents my grandfather gave me to buy this record from a neighborhood garage sale in Pacific Palisades, CA circa 1980 wasn't technically "my" money. However, I had a choice of records, and my pick was made. And I was holding the money to acquire it. The only other hobby that interested me more than music and computers at that age was astronomy. At that moment, there was nothing cooler in life than space and astronomy.
I had zero interest in Star Wars or The Empire Strikes Back (having just been released that year.) Those were just movies. Neither was about real space. Having read several books mainly concentrating on the nine planets and all their discovered satellites at the time, and having my interest in music grow and grow each year, a record about astrononomy was a major score.
I wasted no time putting on this record the moment I got home. I didn't know what to expect... and what I heard was nothing I would expect.
An 8-year-old doesn't care how accessible or difficult a song or album is. It's either cool or it is not cool. Since this was an astronomy record, it was automatically cool. This meant that if I didn't "get" what I was listening, I was going to force myself to understand why this record was cool, no matter how long it took.
I had no clue what to make of The Harmony Of The World. There's no singing. There are no voices at all. There are no melodies, and there are no rhythms (to an 8-year-old, that is.) There was a lot of scary humming sounds that went on for a long time. The only fun I could get out of the record was to play around with the speed of playback.
The giant 70's wooden monstrosity that was my grandparents' stereo system had a built-in turntable with four record speeds: 16, 33, 45, and 78. I would often just play around with these four speeds whenever I gave The Harmony Of The World my daily listen.
It wasn't until too long that my mother and grandparents asked me to use headphones whenever I played "that" record. They bought me a pair of headphones just for the purpose of saving their sanity from my super cool astronomy record. "Why don't you listen to other records? You played that one enough already." They never realized how much they were daring me to play this record longer and longer every time they asked that. How dare they tell me to put away something they knew I loved. I was always overly obsequious to my elders. I never was when it came to The Harmony Of The World.
Two months later, I was giving up. I was growing tired of trying to figure out why The Harmony Of The World existed. Nonetheless, I refused to toss this record aside. Even though I had moved on to more conventional records by Lipps Inc., The Gap Band, Devo, and XTC, I knew I had something special, and always kept it in a special place since.
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Several years later, thanks to two adventurous 80s radio stations in Los Angeles: commercial station KROQ and college radio station KXLU, my tastes in music had expanded beyond mainstream pop and dance circa 1985. I had no friends from grade 7 to 12, so the radio, the record store, and the cooler magazines at the nearby supermarkets were my only source of music discovery. My family always encouraged me to indulge in music, as it certainly was keeping me out of trouble, so I went record shopping every weekend.
The last summer before I headed out to college at UC Irvine in 1989, I came home and played my Happy Flowers record Oof. I put the needle on the track "I Said I Wanna Watch Cartoons." Happy Flowers were a Charlottesville, VA duo known for making nauseous sounding noise rock with affected baby screaming and elementary bullying as their vocal delivery.
My grandparents and my mother ran into the living room and thought I was choking or dying! They found out it was just the record I was playing. "HOW CAN YOU CALL THIS 'MUSIC'? YOU SPEND ALL YOUR MONEY ON RECORDS, AND THIS IS WHAT YOU BUY? THAT'S DISGUSTING!"
Somewhere in the middle of my whole family yelling at me, I turned my head. And for the first time in almost 10 years, my eyes landed on the corner of "that" record poking out from the little pocket inside my grandparents' still functioning 70's wooden stereo monolith.
I've kept and protected The Harmony Of The World ever since. It changed my life. During those two months of stubbornly listening to the record in all possible manners, this process rendered me immune to being turned away by how weird or odd or experimental any music could be. I also realized I wasn't constrained to how I wanted to hear my records, thanks to playing around with the speeds on my grandparents' turntable.
The biggest irony, however, is that I finally understood The Harmony Of The World when I played it for the first time in nearly 10 years -- and I became extremely disturbed. I quickly calmed down once I realized the benefits I got from this record. Yet, The Harmony Of The World became and has remained the creepiest record I've ever heard.
The full title of the record is: The Harmony Of The World: A Realization for the Ear of JOHANNES KEPLER'S Astronomical Data from Harmonices Mundi 1619. It was made by two Yale professors in 1979: Willie Ruff and John Rodgers.
I was just about to post a link to my vinyl rip of this record, as I had yet to see another copy of this record in existence. However -- according to Amazon -- this record is currently in print on CD. So I will hold back from my original plan in light of this discovery. I just purchased the CD, and will report back if this CD's contents differ from the album's.
Just take this as a recommendation, in case you're looking for bowel churning drones -- and also to get a small slice of what has changed the course of my music tastes and hence my life.
The cover art may suggest Monstrance is Moonshine Records's latest attempt at PLUR-bot branding of a new dance club genre name called "Monster Trance." However, it's not only a reference to the highly adorned object associated with Eucharistic practices, but also the debut self-titled release by the collaboration of XTC's Andy Partridge, ex XTC keyboardist and ex Shriekback frontman Barry Andrews, and ex Shriekback drummer Martyn Baker.
If you are at least interested in XTC, this release is certainly exciting if not odd news. Barry Andrews was the keyboardist who had only been in the band for their first two albums, White Music and Go 2, released in 1978. His brief tenure in the band signified a distinct phase, primarily because Andrews's rapid and occasionally free-form playing stood out like an odd tentacle in the music. However, the presence of odd keyboard sounds is what allowed XTC to be considered cross-Atlantic peers of Devo and Talking Heads.
Andrews left XTC around the completion of Go 2, as he had.. well, I'll just quote the man himself from the liner notes to the Coat Of Many Cupboards box set, released in 2002:
"[...] Suffice to say the short version is that with the innocent megalomania 22 years I had decided it would best serve the general good if XTC became a Platform for my Thought and Vehicle-for-my-Unique-Personality. Not unreasonably, Andy [Partridge] was reluctant to take up this opportunity and battle (or rather both of us plotting and bitching) commenced. Democracy, man - good for the People - musicians just aren't ready for it."
And here was Andy's side of the story, also quoted from Coat Of Many Cupboards:
"[...] I was the little bastard who went to Virgin and said 'Look he's written all these songs and is insisting we record them. It's going to take the XTC sound down a different road too quickly. Can't we just limit him to two songs?' What a frightened little bunny I was. Here was my childhood dream of being in a pop group, driven by me, just taking off, and now the new boy in the band wanted to grab the controls and fly it to a different place. I admit, I was a selfish shit, especially as the songs Barry had written were actually very good. I didn't want my winter palace stormed thank you."
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It's over 25 years later. Unsurprisingly, Andy and Barry have long settled their differences. XTC's history since Barry's initial departure is a book itself -- literally. And XTC's history continues from there. Amazon.com recently conducted a net-cast interview with Andy Partridge in November of 2006 as part of their "Music You Should Hear" series of broadcasts. You can read the transcript, or you can link to the actual broadcast from Amazon's current Monstrance link. In brief, XTC may be no longer. According to the previous broadcast and a news item from Pitchfork Media in February of 2007 (via a Partridge interview on WNYC), Colin Moulding, the only original member of the group aside from Andy, has apparently retired from music altogether. Unless Colin has a change of heart later, XTC is history.
Andy has been quite busy for the past few years nonetheless, mostly concentrating on his anthology of demo material for XTC, all collected last year in The Official Fuzzy Warbles Collector's Album box set.
Regarding recent adventures more disconnected from "the XTC sound" and venturing into more "difficult" territory, Andy has collaborated with ambient composer Harold Budd on the 1994 release Through The Hill. Later, Andy would work with ex Slapp Happy member and underground cartoonist Peter Blegvad on the 2003 spoken word/experimental album Orpheus - The Lowdown.
Monstrance, however, is the first experiment of which Andy has taken part that has involved another ex-member of XTC. So then! Is this even a slight return to the quirky/jerky days of White Music? Hell no.
Monstrance certainly flaunts the inspirations upon both which Andy and Barry exhibited over their respective careers: Captain Beefheart, Brian Eno, King Crimson, Henry Cow, and other sources of atmospheric avant-garde, not discounting a lot of jazz influences. There's nothing uncharted here. The double-CD -- the result of culling the best 90 minutes out of nearly a day's worth of recorded improvised, unprepared, and non-overdubbed material -- is quite a sprawl. No doubt a first listen isn't going to be sweet.
Nothing here gets to William Hooker or John Zorn levels of explosive free-form noise, and neither does it lazily hover in staidness.
Monstrance's strength is its rawness and clarity. No doubt, anyone who has followed XTC's career is going to expect heavily overdubbed and orchestrated work, so hearing Andy with just a guitar and few effects to play with is harrowing -- and that's a good thing! The man's guitar talents have always been overshadowed by his arrangements, understandably. But it's really refreshing to hear him play out his more challenging sounding facets, without necessarily forcing it in your face. "Chaingang" and "Ur Tannoy" are great examples of this.
Barry's playing has no resemblence to the playing he did back in 1978. Only for moments do the occasional highly dissonant synth-scrapes, like on "Torturetainment", bring that era to mind. However, he mostly plays it cool, but never rests. He'll often switch from ambient presets to basic piano presets to simulated prepared piano presets within the same stretch of material, without the transition sounding jarring ever. It's stating the obvious, but Barry's an accomplished keyboardist, and this release is yet another showcase for it.
Martyn's drumming is the perfect rhythmic accompaniment to both Andy and Barry -- whenever the music is rhythmic. When not, his drum fills are perfect as well. Martyn deserves the spotlight on most of the material here, in fact.
The guys may have claimed to not have any plans or preparation before recording, and maybe this just comes with age, but there's never a moment where one member is trying to butt into the front of the mix via volume or "lick" wars. This trait of Monstrance couldn't have gone undiscussed, right?
Alright, alright, just a sampling here, but without further ado...
Here's a promotional video for the track "Winterwerk", directed by Mitch Keen. "Winterwerk" may be the most obvious Fripp-Eno offering in the collection, and hence great for backing music for every National Public Radio show you can imagine. And yeah, there is something too "new age"-y about this video, but this is good stuff as far as watching the guys in action. Martyn's the man now dog, ur, here.
(Yeesh. I know I know, "Youtube comments lol", but still..) ...
Even though Monstrance represents less than 10% of the full sessions for this album, the 2-CD is still a lot to absorb. There might have been an involved process in the sequencing of these two discs. Or perhaps not. That said, I've honestly gotten more out of Monstrance by transferring the material on both discs to *ahem* another playback medium and then toggling "shuffle." I highly recommend doing the same.
Why does it have to be so difficult for a listener to be able to experiment with the listening experience of recorded experimental music itself? Mainstream pop releases now release deluxe editions often with instrumental versions, a cappella versions, and perhaps other backing tracks. Experimental music often has wacky packaging but (Warning: crass pop-ist generalizations to follow) ends up being just a compact disc or slab of vinyl with really long songs that one has to endure -- at least if there are no consumable vices available to help out. Capitalism vs. Music For The People aside, who's really being more experimental here?
Fah! Anyway... as Andy, Barry, and Martyn came into making Monstrance without a plan and having a grand ol' time with it, why not do the same on the receiving end while the opportunity is there?
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And our first entry into The Rolling Ten of Oh-Seven! It's a modest experiment that's more enjoyable with each listen, even if there's nothing groundbreaking here. My socks are still on my feet, nonetheless. #3 it is!
