Studio Retrospect is a collection of six compositions made in electronic music studios from 1959 to 1984. All were composed for concert hall or theater performance with choreography, as well as for distribution on recordings. Music from the Venezia Space Theatre, The Dresden Interleaf, and Echo-D were composed for quadraphonic theater systems, and were later spatially remodeled for release on stereophonic recordings.
“Long-awaited CD collection of early electronic works from this Sonic Arts Union member (along with Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley, and David Behrman) and co-founder (with Ashley) of the Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music in Ann Arbor, MI (rumoured the first EMS in the US) as well as the ONCE festival(s, 66–74), not to mention his involvement with John Cage and David Tudor as one of the principal composers for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Oh yeah, and Mumma ‘was among the first composers to employ circuitry of his own design in compositions and performance.’ Features the pieces ‘Retrospect’ (1959, whose ‘Densities’ interlude beat B. Gunter et al to the punch [line] by about 30 years), ‘Music from the Venezia Space Theatre’ (1964, as brilliant a headfuck as implied), ‘The Dresden Interleaf 13 February 1945’ (1965, after six minutes of near-silent ghost echoes, one thousand bees invade for exactly 25 seconds, then...), ‘Echo-D’ (1978, harpsichord and Buchla box sources are given 15 minutes in which to roam freely), ‘Pontpoint’ (1966–80), and ‘Epifont’ (1984). Mumma’s been one of the more obscured blokes in possession of a misfiring neuro-transmitter set (his ‘portable recording apparatus’ and related getup puts the MD sham-antics of the Lucky Kitchen set to shame) and what with the ‘electron-archaica’ movement being graced with it's own Ellipsis Arts boxset (like they were all fucking Babenzele Pygmies) you’ll surely find a local pen-pal with which to co-tirade on themes of his inherent era genius and contemporary shadow-likeness (as far as output is concerned, although 1987’s video-performance of his 1974 piece ‘Some voltage drop’ wherein ‘various parts of musical piece are played on musical saw in an empty amusement park; other part is electronic squeals emitted from accelerometers’ would make Gord seem at bat w/old demons) over firelight and fine tawny port. Music, alive, perhaps crawling towards the sun.” — Hrvatski, from Forced Exposure
