A previously unreleased recording of Tony Conrad’s Ten Years Alive On The Infinite Plain is set for release via Superior Viaduct on 26 May. Above you can check out an exclusive excerpt from the performance ahead of its release.
The recorded first performance of Conrad’s masterful minimalist score to a film installation took place in New York’s pioneering experimental arts centre The Kitchen in 1972. Featuring Conrad on violin, the performance also featured composers Rhys Chatham and Laurie Spiegel playing instruments that he had made himself, including a Long String Drone made of a six-foot long piece of wood, a bass string, an electric pickup and metal hardware.
The piece is a droning, hypnotic 90-minute trip with Conrad’s violin circling around and waving throughout the clattering, arrhythmic pulse of Spiegel and Chatham’s instruments.
The vinyl release of Ten Years Alive On The Infinite Plain will feature liner notes from Rhys Chatham and Andrew Lampert, edited by fellow experimental musician Jim O’Rourke, and will be available in a 2LP edition from May 19 in the US and May 26 in Europe.
You can pre-order it here/
Upon hearing the performance for the first time in over 40 years Chatham remarked: "It transported me back to the early Kitchen and the heyday of early minimalism, played outside the Dream Syndicate."
