I've got a feeling I got this album after seeing it advertised in the NME, back in those mid-eighties days when that magazine had yet to undergo its middlebrow makeover, and young people like me could absorb an education in the liberal syllabus of Ballard, Burroughs, Barthes, Bresson and, errr, Tarkovsky from its pages. Add this to the list of "posts explaining why NME isn't as good as was it was back in [insert appropriate decade here]."
It's an historical curio, and I won't pretend that I play it frequently. You really need your historian's sensibility to appreciate it fully, too. I listen through the prism of what has followed, and I hear the influence of/on early jazz of Antonio Russolo's Corale and Serenata, I hear pre-echoes of Luciano Berio's much later compositions in Hugo Ball's pieces for voice, and some of Giacomo Balla's works sound very modern, and reminiscent of the vaguely dadaist pop of Yello (it's a long time since I thought of them: I must go an check out how some of their old recordings sound now). Thus much of the revolutionary impact of these recordings has been absorbed and digested by our culture in the 80 or 90 years since they were made. Perhaps just Kurt Schwitters still sounds completely sui generis (notwithstanding the efforts of Messrs Eno and Byrne to channel him on songs like I Zimbra).
Of course the album, compiled by Colin Fallows and released by the Ark label in Liverpool, is no longer available. However, thanks to the wonderful people at UbuWeb, you can hear it all online.
MusicBrainz entry for this album
Listen to this album in full at UbuWeb
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