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Music of the Week – Laurie Spiegel – The Expanding Universe

Laurie Spiegel, born in 1945, is an avant-garde musician, interested in the cybernetics, the automation and in the experimental music writing using mathematical algorythms. However, unlike many other avant-garde musician, her focus is on what automation can’t accomplish, and she doesn’t want to cut off the link with the traditional music like folk or classical music.

The track I’m presenting to you this week, the expanding universe (title track of the album from which it’s from), was released in 1980, but was written in the ’70s. The recording process itself was very pioneristic: the album was recorded with a DDP-224 computer, a computer so big that filled an entire room, and was remotely operated via a joystick and a keyboard in a room nearby.

The result is astonishing and still very fresh and original, despite the sound can result somehow dated to the modern (and often, sadly, musically illiterate) listener.

Enjoy!