Free-improv - Polyphasic Recordings

CCMC & Michael Snow Cassettes Rediscovered

While walking around Michael Snow’s studio wide-eyed I noticed, among the Walking Woman paintings, dusty analog synths and film equipment, boxes stacked upon boxes of cassettes. Most of which were live recordings from CCMC’s lengthy tenure at the Music Gallery simply labeled with handwritten dates on the spines. Among those however, were several small boxes containing a CCMC double-cassette release from 1990 (originally self-released by the group) which culled together performances from ’89 and ’90 and featured their nascent line-up with Paul Dutton. There were also several boxes containing the Michael Snow cassette release 2 Radio Solos (originally released in 1988 on Freedom in a Vacuum) which contains two frequency scrambling single-take performances on short wave radio, made by Snow during a summer retreat to his remote Nova Scotian in 1980. Michael graciously gave us permission to distribute these crucial artifacts and it is with great pleasure that we offer very limited original copies of these exquisite tape gems for sale through Polyphasic Recordings!

Photo: Michael Snow & Paul Dutton taken by Jill Aston at the Rivoli, July 1, 2011.

CCMC ’90 Double Cassette

These cassettes document a unique phase in CCMC’s history. These recordings – recorded between October 1989 and October 1990 – feature original members Snow, Mattes and Kubota, joined by sound poet Paul Dutton and John Kamevaar (synthesizer, pre-recorded sounds). Dutton, who is still a member of CCMC today (a trio with John Oswald and Michael Snow), was once a member of Toronto’s legendary Schwitters inspired sound poetry quartet The Four Horseman. He joined CCMC in 1989, bringing a new dimension to the group’s sound with his guttural grumblings and Mongoloid droning, leading them into weird outer-space ethnographic territory. This double cassette release is further evidence of how this radical Cabal of Canadian Music Creators always manage to sound peerless, orbiting a universe entirely their own.

Side A

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Side B

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Side C

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Side D

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CCMC ’90 Double Cassette $20.00

Michael Snow – 2 Radio Solos

This incredible document, inseparable from the exact time and place it was created, tunes in to the culture of airwaves and atmospheric frequencies present across the shortwave dial in August 1980. The results, both time-capsule and moody electronic composition, sound something like the Sublime Frequencies’ Radio Series if it was performed by David Tudor or like Holger Czukay’s contemporaneous radio experiments, if he was jamming solo, without Can.

These 2 short-wave pieces are both ‘played’ continuous improvisations. There was no editing, no post-facto electronic alteration. The sounds were found by paying intense attention to fate tuning in and out between stations, changing bands, bass, treble and volume. The radio played is a circa 1962 Normede. The gradual change in pitch and speed on SHORT WAVELENGTH is an ‘accident’: batteries were losing power during the recording. The tape were made at night in a remote North Canadian cabin lit by a kerosene lamp.

- From the liner notes by Michael Snow

Side A

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Side B

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Michael Snow – 2 Radio Solos Cassette SOLD OUT

Find of the Year: Original CCMC LPs Discovered

Last winter we contacted Jonny Dovercourt from the estimable Music Gallery in Toronto about reissuing LPs they released in the 70’s under the Music Gallery Editions (MGE) imprint. Jonny was very enthusiastic about the idea and we agreed that the best place to start would be with the CCMC LPs which are both incredible and criminally unavailable. On our behalf he started contacting the members of CCMC to gather blessings for the project and to locate the master tapes. Not only did we receive enthusiastic approval, but Michael Snow took us by complete surprise and asked us if we’d be interested in distributing the boxes of original CCMC LPs that had been sitting in his basement for over 30 years. It was hard to believe – these LPs had been on our ‘want-lists’ for ages and the prospect of even coming across one copy of these LPs seemed bleak, and suddenly we ended up with boxes full of these historical monsters, fresh as the day they came off the factory line.