Alvin Curran – Fiori Chiari

This 1979 record was the fourth release of six on the Italian Ananda label, co-founded in 1976 by Alvin Curran, Roberto Laneri and Giacinto Sclesi. The record contains two environmental sound pieces that reminded me of a more natural or free-improv take on the types of ideas and atmospheres also heard on Brian Eno’s ‘On Land’ LP.

From the liner notes here’s the description of the piece on side A, ‘Light Flowers Dark Flowers’: a cat (‘Kama’) purring; toy piano; piano; Mio Hani (a five year old Japanese girl) counting in Italian; the tropical bird house of the London Zoo; children in a London schoolyard.

Curran explains that each piece is about 2 hours long in concert and is a blend of conventional instruments, electronics and voice with taped soundscapes. The musical form is ‘a structured improvisation where the the tapes determine the form but the with live content varying from performance to performance’.

He continues “if the music is heard to tell a story it is only that of the listeners; otherwise, the suggestive sounds from nature are employed as if they were other musicians improvising their own musics”.