nonlinearlineage:

From Elliott:

An interesting conundrum in archiving the experimental! David Grubbs has put together an Anotated Playlist of considerably rare recordings by John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, and other experimental composers and musicians of the 1960s- a time when that scene was very opposed to recorded music. The playlist accompanies the release of his book Records Ruin the Landscape.

Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording argues that, following John Cage, new genres in experimental and avant-garde music in the 1960s actively thwarted the form of the LP.  These activities include indeterminate music, long-duration minimalism, text scores, happenings, live electronic music, free jazz, and free improvisation.  How could mercurial performance practices such as these adequately be represented on an album?

 And yet, like it or not, present-day listeners’ understanding of experimental music from the 1960s increasingly has come to rely on recordings. …