Luigi Serafini - Codex Seraphinianus (1976-78)

The Codex Seraphinianus is a book written and illustrated by the Italian artist, architect and industrial designer Luigi Serafini during thirty months, from 1976 to 1978. The book is approximately 360 pages long (depending on edition), and appears to be a visual encyclopedia of an unknown world, written in one of its languages, a perhaps undecipherable alphabetic writing.

The Codex is divided into eleven chapters, partitioned into two sections. The first section appears to describe the natural world, dealing with flora, fauna, and physics. The second deals with the humanities, the various aspects of human life: clothing, history, cuisine, architecture and so on. Each chapter seems to treat a general encyclopedic topic: incredibily strange flora, far-out fauna, bizarre physics and mechanics, biological discharges, technological possibilities, architectural wonders, local funeralogy, scriptural intricacies, eating techniques, and what not. Imagine the Moebius Twins illustrating ethnographic notes by Lewis Carroll, a Jonathan Swift travelogue of Hoffman's Peninsula, or Borges turned Gazetteer.

The writing system (possibly a false one) appears to be modelled on ordinary Western-style writing systems (left-to-right writing in rows; an alphabet with uppercase and lowercase letters, some of which double as numerals) but is much more curvilinear, not unlike cursive Georgian in appearance. Some letters appear only at the beginning or at the end of words, a feature shared with Semitic writing systems. The language of the codex has defied complete analysis by linguists for decades. The number system used for numbering the pages, however, is said to have been cracked (independently) by Allan C. Wechsler and Bulgarian linguist Ivan Derzhanski, among others. It is allegedly a variation of base 21.

Commenting on the Codex, Douglas Hofstadter observed: "Many of the pictures are grotesque and disturbing, but others are extremely beautiful and visionary. The inventiveness that it took to come up with all these conceptions of a hypothetical land is staggering. Some people with whom I have shared this book find it frightening or disturbing in some way. It seems to them to glorify entropy, chaos, and incomprehensibility. There is very little to fasten onto; everything shifts, shimmers, slips. Yet the book has a kind of unearthly beauty and logic to it, qualities pleasing to a different class of people: people who are more at ease with free-wheeling fantasy and, in some sense, craziness. I see some parallels between musical composition and this kind of invention. Both are abstract, both create a mood, both rely largely on style to convey content."

freak-out [358 pages; 150 mb]

Harry Partch - The Wayward + And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma

The second volume of CRI's series of Partch works includes several major pieces and a couple of exquisite jewels. The first four compositions are grouped under the general heading, "The Wayward," all of which deal, in part, with the musical rendering of everyday American speech, particularly the slang employed by migrant workers and hobos in the Depression era of the 1930s. "U.S. Highball" is a string of such exclamations, asides, and dispirited remarks set to a nonet of Partch's idiosyncratic instruments, including various percussion, strings, and justly tuned organs. The exoticism of the instrumental sound contrasts squarely with the everyday patterns of the speech (both sung and spoken), creating a unique kind of tension rarely encountered elsewhere.

Next, who but Partch would have though of orchestrating the cries of newsboys selling their wares on a foggy San Francisco night? Or setting the text of a letter from a friend to music, sometimes chatty, sometimes carping on personal matters? The result is hugely affecting, as the composer is able to ferret out the deep humanity beneath the superficial observations and provide precisely the right accompaniment, not quite sentimental but extremely sympathetic. For "Barstow," Partch went to an even more basic text source: the inscriptions and graffiti found on a highway railing in the remote California town, left over the years by itinerant travelers, not all of it "respectable" by any means (the piece ends with the shout, "Why in hell did you come, anyway?").

The final work, "And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma," is sheer bliss, a showpiece for his invented instruments arranged in a series of 34 one-minute-long sections, gradually increasing from duos to a concluding septet. Many of the themes were working models for those employed in his soon-to-be-written masterwork Delusion of the Fury. They are scrumptious lines full of otherworldly melodies and infectious rhythms, both serving as wonderful illustrations of his instruments' capabilities and utterly delightful miniatures in their own right. A superb recording, The Harry Partch Collection, Vol. 2 is a must-have for any self-respecting fan and a reasonable introduction to the composer's work for the intrigued listener. Brian Olewnick, All Music Guide

[01-04: The Wayward]
01. U.S. Highball - A Musical Account of a Transcontinental Hobo Trip (1943, rev. 1955; recorded 1958)
02. San Francisco - A Setting of the Cries of Two Newsboys on a Foggy Night in the Twenties (1943, rev. 1955; recorded 1958)
03. The Letter (1943, rev. 1972; recorded 1972)
04. Barstow - Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California (1941, rev. 1968; recorded 1982)

05. And on The Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma (1963-64, rev. 1966; recorded 1964)


link@320 [The Wayward]
link@320 [Petaluma]

Negativland - A Big 10-8 Place (1983)

A concrète radio trip through San Francisco, or a surreal travelogue for suburban wastelands everywhere.

Mark Hosler, Ian Allen and David Wills: Conception and Production
David Wills: Narration
Mark's Dad: Whistling

link @320 (vinyl rip) [Re-Up]