This is Michael Nyman from before he got his trademark style, when he was still mainly a music critic, teacher and documenter of experimental music
. The two pieces on the record are themselves very experimental, and were released on Brian Eno's Obscure Label. If I'd had the budget in the mid-eighties, I'd have probably bought all ten releases on the label, but as it was I could only afford half that number, and this was one of them.
1-100 is a piano piece — composed, like the music that made his name, for a Peter Greenaway film — which I think of as sounding a bit like Morton Feldman in mood. But I'm no Feldman expert, so I could be wrong. Bell Set No 1 is for percussion. It reminds me a bit of Paul Schütze's Second Site, without the voice.
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