Texas-based composer Larry Austin, long a proponent of the avant-garde and the capability of new technological resources to create previously unheard soundworlds, has probably never felt like he was the "elder statesman" of anything -- his acknowledged catalog of works remains stubbornly "new" even though it stretches back to 1960. Austin founded the CDCM Computer Music Series on Centaur Records in 1988 and Ottuplo! Larry Austin: The Eighth Decade is Volume 35 in the series and the third disc given over entirely to Austin's ...
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Texas-based composer Larry Austin, long a proponent of the avant-garde and the capability of new technological resources to create previously unheard soundworlds, has probably never felt like he was the "elder statesman" of anything -- his acknowledged catalog of works remains stubbornly "new" even though it stretches back to 1960. Austin founded the CDCM Computer Music Series on Centaur Records in 1988 and Ottuplo! Larry Austin: The Eighth Decade is Volume 35 in the series and the third disc given over entirely to Austin's computer music. Although purely computerized music is not completely foreign to Austin, he prefers to interact with live ensembles or instrumentalists; of the seven works here, one is scored for two string quartets and there are pieces for clarinet, saxophone, contrabass, bass clarinet, and flute, all with computer and/or tape. While the selection mostly dates from 1998 or later, this retrospective does contain a remix of Roma (1965), Austin's earliest electronic work dating from...
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