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EM139

Larry Austin Octo Mixes This CD of Larry Austin's recent work is lively, funny, dramatic, touching. It uses electronics to bring far-away things closer to us. It's like taking a musical trip around the world on an electronic carpet, from his reworking of John Cage's 'Williams' Mix' in 1952, to the sounds of the táragató, a Hungarian folk instrument, to a portrait of new-music baritone Thomas Buckner in New York, to the recounting of a Serbian family history, as Austin puts it, "a dynamically moving octophonic family tree of sound, the wind moving through it, the sonic leaves and creaking limbs animating its landscape." Octophonic? All of this music was composed for an eight-loudspeaker surround-sound environment. And even mixed down to two channels for a stereo disc, the spatial sense is great. The compositions and performers are 'Táragató!' (1998), with Steven Duke (soprano sax) and Esther Lamneck (processed tarogato); 'Singing!...the music of my own time' (1998), with Thomas Buckner, voice; 'Djuro's Tree' (1997), a story told by Alexandra Kurepa and André Waschka; and 'Williams [re]Mix[ed]' (2001), based on John Cage's 'Williams Mix' (1952) for eight magnetic tapes. Buy it!

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