2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Remarkable compilation, January 1, 2010
I am STUNNED to see this wonderful obscurity from 1980 available here. For those unfamiliar with it, a gentleman by the name of Morgan-Fisher invited about 50 creative-types (mostly Brits, but a few American artists such as The Residents and 1/2 Japanese make the cut as well) to submit an audio piece for this compilation; the only stipulation was that the piece should be no longer than 60 seconds in length. From the well-known to the virtually unknown, musicians, composers, visual artists, and performance artists turn in such a wide variety of vignettes that it's impossible to categorize the contents except to say that the results are generally interesting, unusual, and often funny. My favorites are George Melly performing an excerpt from Kurt Scwitters "Ur Sonata" and British art-punk band Metabolist doing an amazing (and much too brief) piece entitled "Racing Poodles".
This comp is highly recommended for anyone into avant-garde spoken-word/music expressionism, but I must offer one caveat here: because this is only available via download, you will miss out on the EXTENSIVE liner notes that accompanied the original vinyl release, and in some cases, those notes provided a crucial context for understanding what the artist was doing (such as in the above-mentioned piece by Melly). For this reason, I can only give this a 4-star rating.
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