Gordon Mumma’s pioneering electronic music – which he first began composing in the 1950s – is showcased on this mesmerising and disquieting compilation
By the time Massachusetts-born composer Gordon Mumma was in his early 20s, he had studied with John Cage, founded a tape-music studio with Robert Ashley in Michigan, and was performing weekly live concerts of electronic music made on his own homemade instruments. This was the late 1950s. A contemporary of forward-looking artists such as Lukas Foss, Henri Pousseur, Lejaren Hiller and Frederic Rzewski, Mumma was still a pre-teen when he disassembled his father’s record deck so it would play backwards and forwards and he’d be able to control the speed. As a student at the University of Michigan, he gleefully took apart the music department’s tape recorders to discover their inner secrets – this was a man who was obsessed with the interaction between man and machine a quarter of a century before Kraftwerk first pondered the possibilities of a pocket calculator.
Like another contemporary, the brilliant Pauline Oliveros, part of Mumma’s search was for a sort of creative time machine, something that would allow past, present and future to be manipulated by artist and instrument together. At the same time, Mumma was also an excellent musician – he played French horn and piano – as well as writing for the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society and the Electronic Music Review.
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by Rob Fitzpatrick via Electronic music | The Guardian
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