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VEX (Scot Gresham-Lancaster, 1993) is short for Vexations and refers to the short chorale written by Eric Satie in 1893 and popularized by John Cage in the early sixties. The enigmatic instructions include the phrase: “if one were to play this 840 times” – not that one should, but still the popular interpretation has been to mount a marathon performance that takes a team of pianists approximately 26 hours to realize. In the age of internet and the fax this is entirely too long, so I embarked on the strategy of using the HUB to meet these vague requirements and still not waste the listeners’ precious time. The instructions that the HUBsters had were quite simple: when you receive a note transpose it up or down a major or minor third, play its full duration and then pass the new note to two other members of the ensemble. In practice we added some governors to this process to be able to control the exponential growth of the notes and to keep the music somewhat in character with Satie’s original. The result was an electronic filigree which wafts above and below the original chorale.

In this recording two performances are represented. In concert in Berlin we played a more extended version of the piece at the end of “Electric Rags III” that was edited down to accommodate a cross fade to the version we performed with the ROVA saxophone quartet at the ProArts gallery in Oakland in June of 1993. I was pleased to be able to maintain the ethereal quality of this beautiful piece while contributing something more to its dreamlife.

“With great immobility” Rosicrurian induced hallucination, I see Mr. Satie taking a lobster o for a Sunday stroll in the park near his home on the outskirts of Paris… – SGL

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from WRECKIN' BALL (ART 1008, 1994), released February 3, 1994
Recorded in Oakland, CA 6/5/93
Composer: Scot Gresham-Lancaster
Performed by The Hub, Alvin Curran (piano), and Rova Saxophone Quartet (Larry Ochs, Jon Raskin, Bruce Ackley, Steve Adams)

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Artifact Recordings San Francisco, California

ARTIFACT RECORDINGS is a project of Ubu, Incorporated, an artist-run, non-profit organization supporting experimental and electronic music based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our download and compact disk series is dedicated to representing a living experimental music tradition that continues to thrive in the cracks between the commercial, academic and classical music establishments. ... more

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