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Automatic Writing

by Robert Ashley

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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    2019 reissue. Remastered and cut, from the original reel-to-reel tape, by Scott Hull, Masterdisk (New York). Manufactured at Record Technology Inc/RTI (California). 180 gram vinyl; Stoughton Old Style sleeve. Includes an insert with a transcription of the words, and the Automatic Writing notes Ashley wrote for Lovely's 1996 CD (that included "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon" and "She Was A Visitor").

    Includes unlimited streaming of Automatic Writing via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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      $22 USD

     

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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about

Lovely Music presents a reissue of Robert Ashley's Automatic Writing, originally released as an LP by Lovely Music in 1979. Over the course of Robert Ashley's career his preoccupation with language and the voice took many forms. He became known in his librettos as a wonderful, funny, moving writer. But with Automatic Writing he examines language at a very "primitive" level -- the human impulse make sounds to express his inner state, whether it be regret, embarrassment, fear, or happiness -- even though there is no one else to listen. Talking to oneself.

"On Automatic Writing, Robert Ashley composes under the influence of his 'involuntary speech.' (In his liner notes, Ashley revealed that he suffered from 'a mild form of Tourette's.') The piece starts quietly, with scraps of Ashley's mild, tremulous voice arranged next to more fluid French translations and barely-there touches of Moog. After Ashley's phrases lengthen enough to encompass sense-making phrases, a bass-register groove briefly appears, vanishes, then returns. Few pieces so quiet have proven as captivating; many that intend to be equally startling can't capture Ashley's range of surprises.” -- Seth Colter Walls, from Pitchfork's "Fifty Best Ambient Albums of All Time"

Automatic Writing compiles three early Robert Ashley works from 1967-79 -- some of his most experimental works. Composed and recorded form over a period of five years, "Automatic Writing", originally issued on Lovely Music in 1979, is the result of Robert Ashley's fascination with involuntary speech. He recorded and analyzed the repeated lines of his own mantra and extracted four musical characters. The result is a quiet, early form of ambient music.

"Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon" and "She Was A Visitor" are excerpts from an opera entitled "That Morning Thing", composed in 1966-67 as a result of Ashley's impulse to express something about the suicides of three friends. "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon", originally issued in 1968, is a woman's description of a sexual experience. Ashley attempts "to demonstrate the dichotomy between the rational-whatever can be explained in words-and its opposite-which is not irrational or a-rational, but which cannot be explained in words." The lead voice performed by Cynthia Liddell, the processed back-up chorus, the recurring bell tone, and the pervading tape hiss, create an unsettling mood.

"She Was a Visitor" was originally issued on the electronic compilation Extended Voices in 1967. It is another form of description, intended to be understood as a form of rumor. The chorus is divided into groups, each headed by a leader. A lone speaker repeats the title sentence throughout. The separate phonemes of this sentence are picked up freely by the group leaders and are relayed to the group members, who sustain them softly and for the duration of one natural breath. The time lag produces a staggered, chant-like effect, with the sounds moving outward from the nearest performer to the farthest.

credits

released March 10, 2017

AUTOMATIC WRITING (1979)

Voices: Robert Ashley and Mimi Johnson.
Electronics and Polymoog: Robert Ashley.
Words by Robert Ashley.
French translation by Monsa Norberg.
The switching circuit was designed and built by Paul DeMarinis.
Produced, recorded and mixed at The Center for Contemporary Music, Mills College (Oakland, California), The American Cultural Center (Paris, France) and Mastertone Recording Studios (New York City) by Robert Ashley.
Mixing assistance at Mastertone Recording Studios by Rich LePage.
A mix of the monologue and electronics was used in the video tape composition, "Title Withdrawn," (from "Music with Roots in the Aether, video portraits of composers and their music") by Robert Ashley.

PURPOSEFUL LADY SLOW AFTERNOON (1968)

Speaker: Cynthia Liddell
Singers: Mary Ashley, Barbara Lloyd, Mary Lucier
Cynthia Liddell was recorded by Robert Ashley, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Singers and bells were recorded at Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University.
Originally released on "Sonic Arts Union, Electric Sound," Mainstream.
The text and recording of Cynthia Liddell's voice were excerpted from the opera, "That Morning Thing" and reorchestrated as "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon" to become the opening number of "The Wolfman Motorcity Revue," a theater work for amplified voices and tape, which has as its subject matter the melodrama and song structures of the nightclub entertainment world.

SHE WAS A VISITOR (1967)

The Brandeis University Chamber Chorus
Alvin Lucier, Director
Originally released on "Extended Voices", Music of Our Time, CBS Odyssey.
Art Direction and Design: By Design
Design: Patrick Vitacco and Ken Cornet
Silhouette by William Farley
Digital mastering by Nicholas Prout and Allan Tucker, Foothill Digital Productions
Published by Visibility Music Publishers (BMI)

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Robert Ashley New York, New York

A distinguished figure in American contemporary music, with an international reputation for his work in new forms of opera and multi-disciplinary projects. Ashley's recorded works are acknowledged classics of language in a musical setting. He pioneered opera-for-television. ... more

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