The Avant-Garde Project, an online lossless music LP archive

June 28, 2011 3:31 PM

The Avant Garde Project is a series of recordings of 20th-century classical, experimental, and electroacoustic music digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today. Until now, of course.

Via UbuWeb, which is also archiving the AGP in installments. See also their recently created Electronic Music Resources, which is a collection of articles, books, interviews, patents, and more, devoted to technical resources concerning the practice of electronic and experimental sound.

posted by carsonb (17 comments total)

The analog rig used to extract the sound from the grooves - Better than Viagra.
posted by Ardiril at 3:43 PM on June 28, 2011

Great find. Thanks!
posted by Lutoslawski at 3:53 PM on June 28, 2011

Audio electronics use AC power to process voltage signals that drive speakers to produce sound vibrations. The electronic processing that occurs is only as good as the AC power that makes up the raw material. Noisy, variable AC power will produce corresponding distortions of the voltage signal. To minimize this, I use a PS Audio P300 Power Plant, which uses AC power from the wall to synthesize pure 117V, 60Hz AC power that drives the PCA-2 power supply, the Lingo power supply, and the A/D converter. The Power Plant is in turn plugged into a PS Audio Ultimate Outlet, which eliminates much of the noise in the AC power that feeds it. To deliver AC power to the PCA-2 power supply and P300, I use PS Audio xStream Power Cords.

Dude, I just grounded my deck to my power amp instead of my mixer and the ground loop totally went away.
posted by [citation needed] at 4:04 PM on June 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Uh oh, $200 power cables. At least he doesn't have any magic rocks sitting on his amp.
posted by modernserf at 4:13 PM on June 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Fantastic, thanks carsonb!
posted by carter at 4:48 PM on June 28, 2011

This is relevant to my interests. Thanks!
posted by ardgedee at 4:49 PM on June 28, 2011

Great find indeed!

Uh oh, $200 power cables.

Scoff all you will, but clean power makes a difference. My studio monitors sounded noticeably better when I started running my power amp through one of those super-duper cables that I bought in Akihabara, and that's the tah-ruth. And just about every recording studio I've been in in Tokyo uses high-end taps and plug boxes and such. All those sound engineers, seriously, they ain't dumb.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:58 PM on June 28, 2011

I thought this site was dead! Good to see UbuWeb has decided to host it.
posted by Wemmick at 6:18 PM on June 28, 2011

Shit, there goes one of my secrets to finding good weird music. At least I still have Mutant-Sounds.

This guy introduced me to the Atrium Musicae de Madrid and their beautiful, bizarre version of La Folia, in which the theme is played on flute, violin, synth, chainsaw, car, and a few others. It's madness and it's genius; I don't know if I've heard an album with cleaner, lusher recording. The torrent I link to originally came from the AGP's account, and it included a little essay about the Atrium and Gregorio Paniagua, the monk who founded it.

The effort the project takes to explain the music it posts helps make its pieces more accessible to me. I'm very grateful.
posted by Rory Marinich at 6:19 PM on June 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Shit, there goes one of my secrets to finding good weird music. At least I still have Mutant-Sounds. Shit, there goes one of my secrets to finding good weird music. At least I still have Mutant-Sounds.


Please share some of your other ones Rory! Just one, plz, plzzz!!
posted by fantodstic at 6:39 PM on June 28, 2011

is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today

Indeed.
posted by hwestiii at 6:55 PM on June 28, 2011

By sheer effort of hitting reload repeatedly, I will make Lasry-Baschet "Structures Sonores" appear on this site ...
posted by scruss at 7:46 PM on June 28, 2011

Previously (linking to the site's former URL).
posted by misteraitch at 10:01 PM on June 28, 2011

Please share some of your other ones Rory! Just one, plz, plzzz!!

Okay, MY favorites in the "astonishing obscure vinyl stuff" category? I'll bet Rory and I have some overlap. Many posts in FLAC among them.

Anthems for the Nation of Luobaniya
exp etc
ghostcapital
सølγ שаябlɛş
oro
posted by mykescipark at 3:10 AM on June 29, 2011 [9 favorites]

Yes, this is an excellent project.
posted by OmieWise at 5:33 AM on June 29, 2011

This site is awesome. Don't miss the Hungarian Steam Engine (literally) recordings.
posted by Jahaza at 11:22 AM on June 29, 2011

I'm glad they're back. Also, from personal experience, re: mykescipark's post, exp etc and oro are both incredible.
posted by converge at 1:23 AM on June 30, 2011