Robert Ashley - Private Parts (The Record) (1978)

If Robert Ashley's Automatic Writing was an experiment in barely comprehensible, involuntary speech coming out of nowhere, its predecessor was a deliberate, clearly (if laidback, almost narcotically) enunciated spoken word opus on thoughts coming out of nowhere.  The two distinct narratives of Private Parts would end up bookending Ashley's landmark 'opera for television' Perfect Lives, but these original versions, on 'The Record', are the perfect way to listen to them, in what may well be his masterpiece.

Accompanied by Robert Sheff, aka "Blue" Gene Tyrrany on keyboards, and Krishna Bhatt on beautifully melodic tabla, Ashley narrates two stories that focus on the mental ruminations of two different people.  In the first one, a man on a business trip distracts himself from the loneliness of his motel room by imagining two men sitting on a nearby park bench.  In the second, a woman stands on a porch at twilight pondering her surroundings, the comforts of mindful breathing and a highly personalised numerology, and the cosmological heretic Giordano Bruno.

The music is supremely relaxing, with just a slight uncanny edge to it.  What makes The Backyard the superior of the two for me, at least musically, are Bhatt's brisker rhythm and Tyrrany's gradual introduction and swelling expansion at key points.  Ashley pours forth line after line, each potentially loaded with meaning or insignificance, depending on what mood each line catches you in and the level of attention you want to bring to each listen.

This has the great effect that no two listening experiences of the album are ever the same.  Even after spending several years with it, one particular line can just jump out at you in a way it hasn't before: in this instance, whilst having to divide my attention between listening to The Backyard whilst writing, I just caught "Behind her the great northern constellation rises in the majesty of its architecture."  But then, Ashley's very next line is the fourth-wall-leaning "Well, maybe that’s a little too much", and directs the character back into some more abstract thoughts of Bruno's martyrdom and the nature of twilight.  Prepare for many, many such bizarre moments of sudden clarity with Private Parts.

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pw: sgtg

Original LP cover

Robert Ashley - Automatic Writing (1979)

An absolute classic of avant-garde ambient, Automatic Writing was the result of Robert Ashley's fascination with 'involuntary speech', the mild form of Tourette's syndrome that he had.  Eventually getting some close-miked recordings of vocal sounds and phrases that he liked - more for their texture and cadences than any actual words - Ashley processed them electronically and built this 46-minute piece around them.

The result was this beautifully ghostly, formless drift in which Ashley's words are whispered back to him in French by a female voice, whilst sounds from a Polymoog chirp and click away in the background, and intermittent snatches of music from a Farfisa organ appear to be coming from an adjacent room.  Whether you listen to this on the threshold of audibility as ambient music, or turn it right up to study the details, Automatic Writing has a unique, hypnotic effect that makes it endlessly listenable.  It even inspired a 'tribute' piece by a certain SGTG regular - that'll be Wednesday's post.

For now, just enjoy one of Robert Ashley's finest ever extended recordings, plus a couple of CD bonus tracks that I've left in as they're quite interesting - both are from a 60's 'opera' project, That Morning Thing, which Ashley wrote in reaction to the suicides of three female friends.  She Was A Visitor, in which phenomes of the words are bounced around the voices of the performers, was actually featured right at the beginning of this blog.  Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon, with its tape hiss and extremely unsettling monologue (sampled at the end of Whitehouse's Ripper Territory, no less), will stay with you for a while afterwards - if you've been listening to Automatic Writing to chill out, perhaps best to hit the stop button at the end of it.

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Brandeis University Chamber Chorus - Extended Voices (1967)

This is from the same box set as the Pierre Boulez disc from last week, a great 10-CD collection of some of the greatest music of the 20th-century avant garde, from long-out-of-print CBS & RCA LPs spanning approximately 1964-1974.  One of the best £12 I spent last year.

Extended Voices was originally released in 1967, with The Brandeis University Chamber Chorus performing pieces by six avant-garde composers under the direction/sonic manipulation of composer Alvin Lucier.  All of these recordings are worth taking in for their sheer uniqueness and groundbreaking use of sound and technology, making Extended Voices an effective album experience that fascinates throughout.

After an okay start (there's much better Pauline Oliveros works out there to discover), the two long pieces on Side One are particularly mindblowing, with scraps of speech and vocalisation flying around everywhere and being mangled by the electronic treatments. On Side Two, Robert Ashley's 'She Was A Visitor' is the epilogue to a rarely-performed opera-of-sorts, which is really worth reading up on in context.  The two brief Morton Feldman pieces that close out Extended Voices are worth the entry price as well, being hauntingly produced by Lucier for this release.

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