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Sunday, February 20, 2011

The Michael Gordon Philharmonic, USA


The Michael Gordon Philharmonic - s/t. 1987 Neutral.

On the Nishin post, I described my catalog trading days of 1991-1997. What came after that? Well, ebay of course. At first, I primarily bought original LPs that I had as a CD or LP reissue. Prices were pretty good back then (not cheap, but reasonable especially when compared against the catalogs of the day). But as the originals starting going through the stratosphere again, I began to focus on obscurities I never heard of. A big portion of this CD Reissue Wish List came courtesy of those experiments. Most paid off - some did not of course. Information was still pretty scarce, much more so than it is today. So sometimes it was purely on the faith of the ebay description. Like this one. And this little gem has to be one of the most obscure I found. If you do a little Googling, you'll find that you can still find this LP relatively cheap. So it's another case of obscure over expensive.

Michael Gordon is a founding member of Bang on a Can, and also has a few albums under his name. This is the only LP, that I'm aware of, under the Michael Gordon Philharmonic moniker. It's also his first LP. This is the pure definition of what we now call Avant Progressive or what we used to call RIO influenced chamber rock. Gordon is the keyboardist, and you can tell his fondness / training for minimalism. The Philharmonic part is the classically oriented music, but there's a rock backbone, thus pushing the album into our scope. Recommended for fans of The Alain Eckert Quartet, Wittox O'Hara and Chris Lemon. Neat WPA era artwork.

Priority: 3

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