Dockstader: Apocalypse

Tod Dockstader (Composer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Composer: Tod Dockstader
• Audio CD (July 24, 1994)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Starkland
• ASIN: B000009K1F
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #256,760 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

The Washington Post

One of the giants in the field.

Product Description

The second CD from this electronic music master contains Tod Dockstader’s brooding, ominous Apocalypse, along with the piece famous for its haunting use of processed laughter, Luna Park, which a Fanfare critic called “one of the finest works of electronic music I’ve ever heard.” (He adds: “The rest of the disc is not a let-down.”) Also appearing for the first time on this CD are Two Fragments from Apocalypse and Four Telemetry Tapes, the latter being Dockstader’s last true organized sound pieces.

In addition to receiving extraordinary praise within the United States, Starkland’s two Dockstader CDs have won glowing affirmations around the world, from Canada’s Musicworks (“vital and fascinating”) to France’s Revue & Corrigée (“astonishing”) to England’s The Wire (“extraordinary”).

Dockstader’s music turns out to have a surprising relevance to music created decades later; he’s been described as “one of the godfather’s of Nurse With Wound, and a distant cousin of rap and techno” (Option). Craig Anderton writes that Dockstader was one of the few to master “the art of assembling tape-recorded sounds and painstakingly splicing, cutting, dubbing, manipulating and mixing to create final compositions,” then adds: “If you think that sounds similar to the procedures used to create today’s cutting-edge pop music, you’re right.”

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sound Composition Master, July 27, 2005

By 

Ace Vinal - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dockstader: Apocalypse (Audio CD)

This is a great listening experience for anyone willing to LISTEN to a recording in the foreground rather than in the background. Dokstader's composition require patience and stillness as well as personal cerebral silence. His work acts like an aural sculpture and that in itself is a remarkable achievement. Whatever genre titles have been thrown at this form of composition (Concrete music, Tape music, Electronic), it is a form of musical expression unique to our time. Dockstader pulls at the day to day sounds that surround us snaring bits here and there, blending and cutting sonic landscapes the exist only in the ether between transmission towers and the microscopic space between iron-coated plastic tape and an electro-magnetized surface.
A great and important work!

4.0 out of 5 stars unmusic, September 23, 2005

By 

M. Zamani "inamaZ .M" (usa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dockstader: Apocalypse (Audio CD)

bought with "Quatermass"...certainly the better of the two...for those unfamiliar, dockstader was of the 'musique concrete' ilk (google it if you have to), so what you're gonna find here are everyday and some obscure sounds married electronically and transmuted into surreal compositions that defy anyone to dance to them...one of those albums best heard alone and intent upon, more of a study of the history of the evolution of modern sound, if you dig...most interesting after reading about dockstader and the complex techniques he had to employ to create these works in the 60's (yes, the 60's)...a collector's joy