Robert Ashley - Yellow Man With Heart With Wings (1990)

"A two-part composition with narration (part one in Spanish and part two in heavily altered English) commissioned by public radio station KUNM in Albuquerque, this music has a plain, serene beauty. Part one is a narration by Guillermo Grenier in dreamy, flatly inflected Spanish, backed by a four-note synthesizer track, and punctuated by mysterious, heavily processed vocalizations. Ashley throws in extensive sound washes and other electronic figures which flutter in and out of the mix. The text, "Ideas from The Church," will later show up in the 1994 opera, Foreign Experiences. It is included in the liner notes. In part two, the four-note synthesizer line returns, this time backing an ethereal, sustained chord, and the vocals sound "like a distant rendering of the earth's electromagnetic halo."
1990 CD issue of this 1978 piece for voice and electronics. The electronics (with additional Clavinet by "Blue" Gene Tyranny) start out shimmering and subtle, slowing building up in strange, menacing fashion. The first part is in Spanish (with Guillermo Grenier providing the voice); the second part is "in English" (heavily processed vocals by Ashley) and quite radical -- easy to imagine this one sitting very high in a United Dairies-like universe."
~ in Forced Exposure

"An inspired prose-poem in Spanish and English about agriculture, and other perspectives and feelings that occur to people in cities, and to those who live outside cities. Heart-lifting."
~ "Blue" Gene Tyranny, All Music Guide

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Robert Ashley studied with Ross Lee Finney, Roberto Gerhard, Leslie Bassett. Music degrees from Univ. of Michigan and Manhattan School of Music, worked in Speech Research Lab (psychoacoustics and cultural speech patterns) and was a Research Assistant in acoustics at the Architectural Research Lab. Co-founder legendary ONCE Group in the 1960s, co-director Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College in 1970s. Created new kind of opera (sometimes called the New Narrative opera) in works like That Morning Thing (1967), Combination Wedding and Funeral (1964), Perfect Lives an opera-for-TV (1980), e/L Aficionado (1991). Social behavior and and language illusion studies like The 4th of July for tape (1960), The Wolfman (1964), in memoriam ... Crazy Horse (symphony) (1963), The Trial of Anne Opie Wehrer and Unknown Accomplices for Crimes Against Humanity (1968).
+ info on Ashley HERE

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Robert Ashley : English voice and all instruments; except "Blue" Gene Tyranny, clavinet; Spanish voice : Guillermo Grenier

Track 1 : Spanish version running time: 26' 51''
Track 2 : English version running time: 26' 39''

Originally composed by Robert Ashley in 1978 (Visibility Music Publishers)

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Robert Ashley & Paul de Marinis - In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women (1974)

"New definitive CD reissue of this original Cramps label album from 1974, an early classic from Robert Ashley (previous CD version on Cramps is now deleted). This deluxe slipcased version features a 110-page book, reproducing the original Wolgamot text along with fascinating liner notes explaining the whole project from Keith Waldrop and Robert Ashley. The CD features one long composition with Ashley reading a text by poet John Barton Wolgamot. The poem has 128 stanzas; each stanza is made up of the same phrase, into which are introduced four variables, three are names or groups of names or constructions of names, and the fourth variable is formed by the adverb of the active verb. The result is considered "one of the most unusual and difficult linguistic textures in the English language". The underlying music is supplied by Paul DeMarinis on Moog synthesizer. Ashley on DeMarinis: "Paul has elaborated seven different modular combinations, each of which can be controlled by programmed impulses. These derive from the sound of the reading of the poem passed through the regeneration high frequency filter and successively translated into a series of command impulses."

"This uniquely original work for voice and electronics dates from 1972. A 128-stanza poem by the legendary John Barton Walgamot traces a hidden story of social progress and influence within the gradual repetition of a single grand phrase. For example, "In its very truly great manners of Ludwig Van Beethoven, very heroically the very cruelly ancestral death of Sara Powell Haardt had very ironically come amongst his very really grand men and women to Rafael Sabatini, George Ade, Margaret Storm Jameson, Ford Madox Hueffer, Jean-Jacques Bernard, Louis Bronfield, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche and Helen Brown Norden very titanically." In the other verses names are added and subtracted, and there occurs a subtlety organized variation of syntactical parts leading to further mysterious integration of meanings. The voice part is read with as few inflections and breaths as possible -- in the first realization prepared on tape, all pauses were removed, so that the voice has this eternal quality. (Gertrude Stein once mentioned that she aimed for this same quality while in the 1934-35 recording of her works, but had to settle for reading in long breaths). The voice activates electronic sounds that respond with inflected sounds; in the initial realization for records, electronic sounds designed by composer Paul DeMarinis were variously beautiful and humorous. The musical effect is that of an internal voice stimulating involuntary ideas and feelings. This piece, together with Ashley's "Automatic Writing" (1979), "The Wolfman" (1964), "Fancy Free, or It's There" (1970), "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon" (1968, from The Wolfman Motorcity Revue) and "She Was a Visitor" (1967, from the opera That Morning Thing) offer a profound musical exploration of the relation between the physical nature of the voice and social/language behaviors". AMG

Synthesizer - Paul DeMarinis
Voice - Robert Ashley
Text - John Barton Wolgamot

CD reissue in 2002 by Lovely Music

Link removed by request.

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