CD - Paradigm Discs
The reprint of a pioneering project by Trevor Wishart, completed in 1971, "Machine" could easily be mistaken for a very recent release, so well outlined in its audio landscapes, with carefully combined spoken texts, backing vocals and pre-recorded sounds, thoroughly manipulated and with the subsequent addition of several electro-acoustic edits. The work of the English composer only saw the light for the first time in 1973, in a triple vinyl. It was produced for the label of the same University of York where most of the material was sketched out, before being recorded in a power plant in Nottingham, a Schweppes bottling department, a sheet metal factory, in the Leeds telephone exchange and many other similar locations, using a large number of volunteers, most of them students. No instrument was used in those sessions and, in any case, the drones extracted directly from the machines integrate perfectly, setting against the tonal and improvisational singing, which is focused also on single words and narrative fragments, with hallucinated rhythms of an early post-human kind.
Aurelio Cianciotta