Philip Corner
"Metal Meditations" LP

 Philip Corner is a multi-facett artist of the Fluxus movement. His oeuvre is vast, starting back from the early 1960s in New York and Germany, including collaborations with a lot of artists. He perverts a lot of sound sources including piano, tapes, voices and so on.
This record is a retrospective in four parts of his sound experimentations with metal objects, one of my favorite sound source...The first track is a long piece of meditative resonating sounds produced by gongs and with long silent parts where the only audible part is the omnipresent sound of the tape hiss. It results in a disturbing & strange religious atmosphere. The second piece is a short outdoor field recording of percussive sounds on metal without any peculiar change apart from some cars passing by..nothing really exciting. The following track is a recording of a metal pipe installation made with Bill Fontana which was perturbated by the audience footsteps on the squeaky old wood floor. The metallic resonance here acquires some tonal richness over the length, only deranged by these rare wood squeaking sounds. The conclusion of the record is again a short field recording of chaotic manipulations of undefined metal objects in a busy town street-- the sound is energic to the contrary of the others tracks.
In conclusion, an interesting testimonial record from this precursor artist but on the whole I was a bit left unsatisfied.
 
Algha Margen - LP