BLUME Vinyl & CDs

Review: Blume Records return to the forefront of the contemporary experimental canon with the first ever vinyl edition of (a study of) James Tenney's infamous Fluxus suite, Postal Pieces. The storied composer and music theorist was an alpine fixture of the modern music compositional world, with his various writings - both notated on the stave and prosaically penned in the journal - amounting to exquisitely impenetrable tracts on every isolable facet of music theory from harmonic perception to process music to sound synthesis to spectral music. Originally a set of 11 pieces but truncated to five here, drawing on a set of live recordings laid down in 2003, Postal Pieces is one of many of Tenney's works emphasising process over end result. Perhaps the emphasis on process was an attempt to treat the sufferances of "schizophonia", which had plagued musicologists since the 1930s as one of many fussed-over consequences of recorded music obscuring the original source of the sounds heard through an extended medium. The album's sonic pentagram - of long sequences resembling air-raid sirens, its basal textural swells and backroomed feedback loops - might sound doomy to the glib ear. Ultimately, though, this album could also be read as a simple formal exercise, one intended to divert Tenney's own aversion to writing letters (despite his wont to write music theory). Ironically enough, we're sure that, in the wake of this reissue and its hot demand, the postal system itself will thank Tenney for the boost in revenue.

Review: Now celebrating its tenth anniversary, Blume presents Ben Vida's Vocal Trio on cream vinyl. It is a groundbreaking album that merges systems-based synthesis with real-time vocal collaboration and exemplifies a significant leap forward for one of the US's most innovative artists. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu, Vocal Trio is both creatively visionary and remarkably beautiful and comes on limited vinyl with specially commissioned liner notes by Bradford Bailey and a leporello insert featuring the visual score. It is surely set to be one of the most important contemporary records of 2024.