Discosphere

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 2020-05-10

Label: fony

A porecelain figure in a pinwheel dress pirouettes perpetually 0n the lid of a box of music. The spinning mechanism also turns the gears which time the sonorous striking of tongs. The strikings sound as the dance is seen. Dance is being moved moving to sound or without or not. Dancing is what is watching is what is dancing. Music is the hearing of dancing. *

This album features soundtracks for dances. Some were created before dances and then adapted to them. Some were created after seeing some particular constructions of movement. All these sounds were made because of dance. Other soundtracks for dance, also by John Oswald, are not in this collection. Some of them are logically inseparable from hearing while seeing. The hearing alone is not enough. Portions of 'Shane', 'Baryshnikov', and 'Fence' are like that. The parts of the dances that are featured here are other portions of much longer works. The soundtrack to Bill Coleman's ballet 'Zorro' is performed live by Shelley Hirsch and David Moss. for instance, exists as a live recording, that is not included here, mostly for that reason.

"Wili", of the cover photo, is a solo which Sue Lee dances, and it is a companion piece to "Wounded", which was Oswald's only entirely collaborated dance by that time (except for 'Warm, Wind, Pressure and Aura' created with Belinda Weitzel, which has no soundtrack). It was created with Holly Small who also created "Wili". In "Wounded" the musicians are also the dancers. These soundtracks will be released in a subsequent volume of DISCOSPHERE.

volume note: This album has a wide dynamic range — it is sometimes potentially very loud and it is sometimes equally very quiet. At first this variety of volume may be confusing. A suggested level can be set by first referring to one of the talking pieces, such as Track 12. Set loudness controls so that the voice is at a realistic level, as if the speaking person is in the room with you. The rest of the album is relatively louder and quieter than this.

* Or, As Webster's Third International New Dictionary would have it, 'being executed by different parts of the body in accordance with temperament, artistic precepts, and purpose'.