
John Mcguire
Pulse Music
Release date:
December 16, 2022
Label:
Unseen Worlds
Presented together for the first time, American composer John McGuire's Pulse Music series (1975-1979) blurs the popular narrative that Minimalism was a reaction against Europe's angular, intellectual, inscrutable high-modernism. McGuire, born in California, studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles and UC Berkeley before going to Europe to study with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Gottfried Michael Koenig. His compositions lock serialism's warped geometries onto an evenly spaced grid, perfectly preserving serial music's multi-dimensionality while smoothing it's wildest disjunctures and sharpest angles. If serialism is Montreal's Habitat 67 modular housing complex, McGuire's Pulse Music compositions are the primary-colored grids of Le Corbusier's L'Habitation apartment complex - an exuberant expression of the same materials and principles. Every layer of pulses is made distinct through it's timbre, register, and tempo. We hear them as a plurality, organized like stars in the sky. Every so often the sky rotates and the stars appear in a different arrangement. Our ear naturally starts to draw connections and, as it sweeps between one layer and another, what was discrete becomes continuous. Pulses become flows; quantitative reality becomes qualitative experience. McGuire's pulse pieces were realized electronically, in the newly built Studio for Electronic Music at the State University of Cologne and WDR, but Pulse Music II adapted his ideas to an orchestral canvas. Commissioned retrospectively by the composer and radio producer Hans Otte for his Pro Musica Nova festival at Radio Bremen. Alongside the Bremen orchestra, conducted by Klaus Bernbacher, were four pianists-Christoph Delz, Herbert Henck, Deborah Richards, Doris Thomsen-and McGuire himself playing a series of twelve drone-like chords on the organ. The techniques of the electronic Pulse Music pieces required a speed and precision too great for live musicians, so for Pulse Music II McGuire adapted his method to an expanding progression of durations; this had the advantage of being much slower and requiring none of the carefully calibrated tempo changes of Pulse Music I or III. It was still based, says the composer, "on what seemed to me an interesting foray into a completely different kind of time structure. Complex time structures had, by 1975, become a condition for me in two senses: a compositional requirement and maybe an illness." The present recording was made by Radio Bremen at the work's first and only performance, and has been held in their archive until now. "108 Pulses" - originally composed a proof-of-concept piece and realized as a single, repeating loop in a 20 minute tableau - is also presented here for the first time.
Tracklist:
- 1. Pulse Music I (1976)
- 2. Pulse Music II (Live, 1978 Pro Musica Nova Festival)
- 3. Pulse Music III (1979)
- 4. 108 Pulses (1975)
Order vinyl:

Vinyl & Turntable Accessories
-
Boundless Audio Record Cleaner Brush
-
Record Display Frame
-
Beat Breakerz Record Cleaning Cloth
-
Audio-Technica AT607a Stylus Cleaner
More upcoming records
-
Philippe Sarde Sortie De Secours24 February 2023 [Orbis]
-
Tryglav The Ritual17 February 2023 [Extreme Metal Music]
-
Wind & Fire Earth Gratitude (Translucent) (2xLP)03 February 2023 [Friday Music]
-
Wasted Haunted House03 February 2023 [Denomination]
-
Highly Suspect The Midnight Demon Club17 February 2023 [300 Entertainment]
-
Bruce Broughton Young Sherlock Holmes Original Soundtrack (2xLP)24 February 2023 [Quartet Records]
-
The Rolling Stones Aftermath Us31 March 2023 [Abkco]
-
Sam Goku Things We See When We Look Closer17 February 2023 [Permanent Vacation]
-
Dj Khaled God Did (2xLP)24 February 2023 [Epic Records]
-
Friends Again Trapped And Unwrapped03 March 2023 [Last Night From Glasgow]
-
H. Hawkline Milk For Flowers24 March 2023 [Heavenly]
-
Tim Hill Giant10 February 2023 [Innovative Leisure]
-
Deathgrave It's Only Midnight14 April 2023 [Tankcrimes]
-
Leith Ross Motherwell03 February 2023 [Birthday Cake Media Inc]
-
Purling Hiss Drag On Girard24 March 2023 [Drag City]
-
Jasper Liberation24 February 2023 [Trading Places]
-
Dave Van Ronk Hear Me Howl - Live 196403 February 2023 [Rockbeat Records]
-
John Davis John Davis31 March 2023 [Goldstar Recordings]
-
Kentato / Ono Haneda Space Adventure Cobra Original Soundtrack (3xLP)24 February 2023 [Wayo Records]
-
Oberbaum The Absence Of Misery10 February 2023 [Freaksville Record]
-
Over Kill The Years Of Decay05 May 2023 [Bmg Rights Management Us Llc]
-
Mull Historical Society This Is Hope24 February 2023 [Demon / Edsel]
-
The Police Around The World Restored & Expanded (Blue) (2xLP)24 February 2023 [Mercury Studios]
-
Sayonara Ponytail All Night Thing21 April 2023 [P-Vine]