PALESTINE, CHARLEMAGNE - Sound 1

As the title well underlines, Sound 1, electronic sonority is a starting point in Charlemagne Palestines research for the Golden Sonority. Previously unpublished, this radical and fundamental work has now been released on LP record in collaboration with the New Media Dept. of Centre Pompidou (National Museum of Modern Art) in Paris for the first Oeuvres Sonores event, December 15th, 2008. Charlemagne Palestine started to dream of an expressive, continuous, ever-moving, ever-changing sound-form; an enormous sonorous 3-dimensional sculptural canvas in mid-air, using electronically-produced sounds. At first, he began experiments with simple sine tone generators, emitting the purest sound waves without any overtones. Then, gradually, with access to Moog and arps, he constructed sounds using the sine/sawtooth/square wave oscillators in a fluid, ever-changing mix of adding or filtering overtones and white noise to create sonorities constantly changing timbres and weight. Palestine experimented in this way from 1964 till 1974 in NYC and then, in California. Finally, he assembled his own drone machine of 16 ultra stable oscillators designed by Serge Tcherepnin and 4 band pass filters designed by Donald Buchla. He would build up a sound, oscillator by oscillator, then add ever-so-slightly to the oscillator input, tiny increments of white noise that would gradually make the sounds thicker and thicker, until they were immense, sacred machines humming like gargantuan Tibetan bees. Charlemagne played them very, very loud, making all the room and objects in it resonate, while outside all was quiet and sleeping. He worked like a painter with a palette and a canvas and he mixed and added and mixed and added over, entire nights, mixing, adding, and then lying on the mattress and listening and fine-tuning. Finally, at a certain point, after several nights, the sonority seemed ready to record. Hed put on the tape, prepare the tape machine with the proper level as not to overload it, and record the texture. This 1-sided LP was issued in an edition limited to 500 copies. Includes a 25-page program booklet, including an essay by Charlemagne Palestine and artwork by John Giorno. -Alga Marghen. Last copy, has corner ding.