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DEX 015CD
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Reissue of a key minimalist masterwork. Dreyblatt's documentation in the past has been slim, with albums on Hat Art, Tzadik and Table of the Elements. This album features a 39 minute performance by Arnold's group known as The Orchestra of Excited Strings, recorded in 1981/82 Dreyblatt, Michael Hauenstein (bass violas with Excited Strings), Peter Phillips (Midget Upright Pianoforte), Kraig Hill (Portable Pipe Organ) & Greg Lewis (Hurdy Gurdy). "Dreyblatt only had one record Nodal Excitation (on the mostly post-AACM jazz label India Navigation), before he packed and moved to Berlin, were he concentrated on other activities, making only 2 more records over the next 10 years. But for those who caught the action, Arnold was the man. He was more rock than any of the other minimalists combined, and he was also the only one to really tap into that massive proto-minimal sound that Conrad had squelched out of his tin-contact mic violin in the early 60s. Indeed, in the early 70s, after being in school in Buffalo, where Conrad taught, Dreyblatt moved into Manhattan to work for LaMonte Young, where he witnessed first hand, and listened first-ear to those legendary recordings of the Theatre of Eternal Music. He got interest in long string sounds, and bought a bass that he wired with piano wire. By hitting the strings instead of bowing them, Dreyblatt was able to get those ringing overtones, but he also had added something new: pure rhythm...So what you have here is Dreyblatt's freshman record, a slice of minimal history that is as potent now, if not more, as it was then. It was a lighthouse that was aiming the wrong way when the tugboat came by, but now it's shining right in your face."
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DEX 012CD
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2022 restock, all-time classic. "First issued in 1970 by the German label Wergo, What?? (as we would call it here in America) was obscure even among the avant company it kept in; labelmates such as Stockhausen, Ligeti and Cage overshadowed Rabe from the start." Rabe: "About 85% of the material is made up of electronically generated tones, which however are never present in their static, original form. Each partial has been specifically treated in itself, which can at times yield a very rich result. What?? was created in the late summer of 1967, and was realized by me in the electronic studio of the Swedish Radio...the second What?? is the same as the first, but at half-speed, ie. one octave lower. This may seem a lousy way to fill up a CD, but in fact through the years I have been using both versions in performances. With the kind of sound material used in What??, it does not simply sound half-speed. In a way it becomes another piece of music -- mellower, and the single events of course easier to distinguish."
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DEX 003CD
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1996 release, somehow still available. Dexter's Cigar is the now defunct Drag City subsidiary reissue label run by Jim O'Rourke. "Created in 1979, this seminal no-wave EP was released to little fanfare. At the time, lots of people were either coming to grips with (or should have been coming to grips with) the reality that this 12" was in many ways much wilder than anything happening in that Decline-influenced era. For better or worse, this aura of uncertainty concerning the band and their music could be said to extend to the present." In the words of Jordan N. Mamone: "brutal outbursts of feedback-and-blare emitted by the late Bruce Wisiepe remain perhaps the most underrated and unknown influences in underground rock."
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