Browse by Artist: FLYNT, HENRY

Artist:	FLYNT, HENRY
Title:	Raga Electric
Label:	LOCUST
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	LOCUST 006CD

"In the early '60s, fresh from his clean behind the ears years at Harvard, Henry was undergoing rapid ideological shifts: cavorting with Maciunas and the whole Fluxus bit, doing performances at Yoko Ono's loft and recording with La Monte Young; having it out with his Stalinist cohorts over the relative merits of a good blues run and searching for a new musical language outside of the various generic artistic restrictions before him at the time. What he arrived at was an expressive practice he dubbed audact (auditory acognitive cultural activity) and that is what you will hear on this collection. Collecting key material from 1963 to 1971, Raga Electric is a 7 piece distillation of some of Henry's most adventurous, audactatious, outsider musical endeavors. The record begins with, of all things, a hybrid, off the wall treatment of the traditional supranationalist anthem The Marine's Hymn sung in a thick tongued, fully untudored Hindustani vocalese to brilliantly sun drenched, lightly strummed acoustic guitar accompaniment. The title cut, 'Raga Electric', is a twisted, howling fake hindustani rag with staccato untuned guitar and bleating screams recorded at his home just a few short hours after catching Pandit Pran Nath at a downtown morning concert. The howling orgasmic yodel of a visionary's self-posession and certain surrender on this 1966 cut puts Henry somewhere at the epicenter of the folk isolationist world of Jandek and the ethnodislocation of the Sun City Girls, to name but a few. The side long closer, 'Free Alto', is a monstrous exploration of the ins and outs of the tenor saxophone which, upon hearing it, Terry Riley referred to as 'a very articulated musical program'. Though it remains Henry's single meeting with the instrument, over the course of some 13 odd minutes, he finds out everything he needs to know about the horn and gets into some pretty hairy free squelch and squeal territory in the process. 'I was just pulling sounds out of a hat and just stringing them together,' he recently told me. As hats go, this one should fit the heads of today's listeners just fine." -- Dawson Prater

Artist:	FLYNT, HENRY
Title:	Back Porch Hillbilly Blues Volume 2
Label:	LOCUST
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	LOCUST 014CD

"Here we find ourselves hot on the skidmarks of Henry's brawl with sonic self invention documented on last summer's splendid Raga Electric with two complementary volumes emerging from the same physical time but a very different head space continuum indeed. On BPHB Volume 2, avant-hillbilly master fiddler Henry Flynt scuffles through a most peculiar set of electrified and acoustic bumpkin fiddle howls and screeches circa early to mid 1960s. From the enviable opening 'echo rock', in which Flynt does his best to compete with the electro-echo buzz of a Jorgen Ingmann or Link Wray to the beauteous instrumental glow of the extended modal country jam of 'Jamboree', Flynt proves once again that his is not a music simply rooted in the taut belt of New York isms, schisms and jisms. This is music that howls from a unique voice whose love for the folk songbook (known and imagined) is as resonant as a cowbell and as deep as a freshwater well."

Artist:	FLYNT, HENRY
Title:	Back Porch Hillbilly Blues Volume 1
Label:	LOCUST
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	LOCUST 016CD

"Like a hidden relic from the far side of the Harry Smith catalog, these early 1960s recordings are a splendid collection of High lonesome hillbilly fiddle and ukulele instrumentals that are surely Henry Flynt's most articulated statements to date of his honest to god, true to life affinity and love for that dry earth choogaloo upper mountain lower boogaloo foot stomping folk music. Standouts include the acid fried 13th Floor Elevators-ish 'Sky Turned Red' and the 15 plus minute lazy zen epic hum and strum album closer, 'Blue Sky, Highway and Tyme'. No doubt, this is Appalachian bruit driving music bar none."

Artist:	FLYNT, HENRY
Title:	Purified by the Fire
Label:	LOCUST
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	LOCUST 067CD

2006 repress. Recorded 12/14/81. "The psychedelic sounds of musical pioneer Henry Flynt's drone works with collaborator C.C. Hennix are quietly becoming the stuff of legend. Over some 40 plus minutes, we are treated to a true tour de force that's part Hindustani inflected musical miasma and part warped hillbilly vibrational swing that sways in and out of auditory focus. This is vertiginous music for the third ear. Line Up: Henry Flynt (Violin); C.C. Hennix (Pandit Pran Nath Tamboura).

Artist:	FLYNT, HENRY
Title:	New American Ethnic Music Volume 1: You Are My Everlovin'
Label:	RECORDED
Format:	2CD
Price:	$19.00
Catalog #:	RECORD 003CD

2007 repress, originally released in 2001. The classic double CD release that really renewed the interest in Henry's Flynt's idiosyncratic music (linked to Conceptual art and minimalism) -- at least 10 other CDs have followed since the release of this one. It is listed as #6 on Alan Lichts' "Minimal Top Ten" list, which says a lot. First volume in the series subtitled: New American Ethnic Music. "Recorded in '80 and '81, two mind-blowing disks delivering flowing, trance-inducing violin solos of extreme beauty and seriousness. In these incredible electronic hillbilly music violin performances, an exalted synthesis of American ethnic music, raga-like lyrical virtuosity, and a deep sensibility takes place--a nod to human culture from the great nihilist philosopher and father of Concept Art. Should be completely world-famous, but only now is this music beginning to the get the attention it deserves.

       Before the publication of his music, Flynt was most often known as an (often distorted) footnote in art history, as the man who invented 'Concept Art,' Flynt's name in the early sixties for his formal attacks on logical and mathematics, often presented in art galleries. Flynt was initially (1962) a composer of the post-Cage school who quickly turned completely against modernist music and created his own Flynt genres, primarily through radicalizing Southern musical forms like Bluegrass, Country, and Country Blues-elevating them to an enchanted level, much as Coltrane did with the jazz of his time. His music is a parallel stream to his extremely distinct and radical philosophy (his primary work is as a radical intellectual, with visionary, wide-ranging work that is highly intellectually demanding). More about Flynt and his philosophy can be found at his web site, http://www.henryflynt.org.

       One note about Flynt, lest unhelpful inaccuracies continue. He has been mistakenly associated with the Fluxus art movement, of which he was never a member, and even has been claimed as a sort of trophy by Fluxus members. Flynt was NEVER a supporter of Fluxus, in fact he was a friend of Fluxus founder George Maciunis who published a few of his early works, and in a (very distorted way) he exerted a small influence on the movement (his wide-ranging political critiques of 'European serious music' and of art itself-including Fluxus-caused a small rift in the movement). Classifying Flynt as Fluxus is totally unhelpful in understanding his highly singular work, which is simultaneously far more intellectually radical & serious than the Fluxus post-dada shenanigans, and also expresses a gritty & virtuosi musical sensibility which couldn't be farther from 'Fluxus Music.' The only reason this error has made it into print is the laziness of some historians who have trouble placing such a singular lone wolf figure in the stream of conformist art culture."

Artist:	FLYNT, HENRY
Title:	New Americam Ethnic Music Volume 3: Hillbilly Tape Music
Label:	RECORDED
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	RECORD 007CD

Third volume in the New Americam Ethnic Music series, following: You Are My Everlovin' & Spindizzy. Featuring recordings from 1971 through 1978, this focuses on shorter tracks that explore the third-ear mania of looped violin playing as well as could be imagined. Breathtaking stuff and essential for all followers of the Tony Conrad/post-minimalism timeline. "This is an amazing document of the nihilist father of concept art and inventor of electronic Hillbilly music. The record shows more than ever Flynt's musical genius, the audacity of his compositions (which seek to exalt rural southern music to a level beyond this civilization) and the strange qualitative fluidity of his playing."

Artist:	FLYNT, HENRY
Title:	New American Ethnic Music Volume 4: Ascent to the Sun
Label:	RECORDED
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	RECORD 021CD

"The final release in the New American Ethnic Music series (but not the last Henry Flynt on Recorded) is Ascent to the Sun, a brilliant, sparkling hillbilly raga in the family of You Are My Everlovin' but with a unique double violin approach and a mind-bending structure all its own. The piece covers incredible ground in terms of specificity of mood and sentiment, and is deeply listenable and experimental at once. It is a new creation by Flynt circa 2004, engineered by Tim Barnes."

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