200e

I assume quite a few of you collect and love early electronic music......

I just bought Warner Jepson double CD on melon expander

warner jepson “totentanz and other electronic works 1958-1973” double 
compact disc set

* bugs at large (2:43) 1967
* blood knot (7:27) 1970
* skate date (0:41) 1970
* laughter after (4:37) 1958
* rirlwa (2:00) 1970
* good humor man (2:34) 1967
* jacks (1:36) 1967
* jail gate crazy (1:03) 1958
* splace (1:20) 1967
* totentanz (35:05) 1967

* the dog (1:53) 1970
* for trying out loud (0:42) 1958
* the big purr (0:58) 1958
* the awakening (20:03) 1968
* see is never all the way up (24:44) 1973

... by far the most anticipated early-electronic music reissue around 
these parts since it was announced a year or so back ; this double-disc 
collection of just about everything by bay-area outsider / composer 
warner (ne “warren”) jepson, including his totemic (... and previously 
creel pwned) lp “totentanz” ::


... now why the melon expander didn’t use that image on the cover is 
beyond me ... but i digress. what we do get here : a bunch of amazing 
bedroom-lineage electro-acoustic experiments dating back to 1958 (!!!) - 
most invoking mysterious bleep-infused landscapes with tons of 
psychedelic organ (played on an instrument hand-painted by bruce conner 
!!!) & tape mangling, prepared piano / strings & a few fairly harsh 
early/primitve synth-stunners done on the buchla @ mills & the 
experimental television center ... these lead up to the album’s 
centerpiece ; the full 35-minute “totentanz” - of which i described (in 
reference to the o/p creel pone version) thusly ::

... this one that has “nurse with wound list” written all over it; yet - 
nary a mention in the notes to said 1979 lp and just about anyone 
anywhere on out on our global interweb... purportedly the score to a 
1971 ballet by carlos carvajal, totentanz overwhelms us with its mystery 
while revealing only the most gratifying collection of sounds from the 
early electronic music canon imaginable ...

the a-side piece contains a long section of tape-based concrète; lo-fi 
pre-industrial thudding, dissonant piano stabs. and much repetition 
(you’ll want to crawl inside this bit and never come out...) - this 
gives way to a great blast of weird-synth patterns that closes out the 
side... on the flip there’s even further mystery layers, which slowly 
give way to the most amazing bit of terry riley lineage repetitive 
minimal synth figuring and blasted spring reverb & gated riffing. 
completely awe-inspiring (with a demonic-looking cover depicting some 
sort of skeletons-and-ghouls-as-wedding-processional ceremony no less.)

the second disc continues on in the same trajectory, with a few shorter 
pieces giving birth to the epic, 20+ minute “the awakening” & “see is 
never all the way up” ... of course, i’m going to go ahead and highly 
recommend this to just about anyone with even a passing interest in 
early electronic music’s dalliance with 60s/70s psychedelic culture - 
it’s a landmark release & mitchell brown has done a bang-up job w/the 
reissue, including contemporary liner notes from jepson & copious 
information as to his modus / motivations ... essential.
melon expander press release...
warner jepson
“totentanz and other electronic works 1958-1973” 2xcd
melon expander 005

the act of dusting off old forgotten master tapes, and old people too, 
can reveal a myriad of results. crappy music that sounded great to the 
stoned performer at the time, crappy music that sounded great before 
time ate away at the tapes, great music trapped behind various 
complications, or, in the case with warner jepson, great music from a 
composer enthusiastic about revisiting it.

jepson recorded over 200 ” tape reels full of electronic sounds at the 
san francisco tape music center, mills college and the national center 
for experiments in television (ncet). some of them were used as 
soundtracks for theatre productions and art films, and some were heard 
ephemerally at art galleries, parties and “happenings” in the late 60’s 
and early 70’s. only one document was ever released - the soundtrack to 
totentanz, a theatre work by carlos carvajal, on an lp that yielded a 
circulation of only 300 copies in 1971.

this 2xcd release is a reissue of that totentanz lp plus many other 
pieces that vary in content from his late 50’s “musique concrete” 
experiments to rhythmic prepared piano and tape pieces to sprawling 
meditative sound paintings done on the 100 and 200 series buchla 
synthesizers. the opening track “bugs at large” might bring to mind 
synthetic rhythms that weren’t commonly heard until 20+ years later in 
the “techno” genre of late 80’s detroit. aside from totentanz, none of 
these works have been heard by anyone in well over 30 years.

he worked with many people who may be on the radar of folks buying this 
cd. whether it was taking photographs of steve reich or john cage, 
playing piano in terry riley’s first ensemble of “in c”, or scoring the 
soft-core porno “luminous procuress” starring the cockettes, jepson kept 
busy in a vital time for creative art and music. though somehow it seems 
he’s slipped through the cracks of time and needed a healthy dusting 
off. this release happily rides the coattails of his re-emergence: 
inclusion in the “visual music” exhibit at the los angeles moca in 2005 
(the 1973 video work “illuminated music” with stephen beck) and spring 
2008’s “california video” exhibit at the getty center (a 50 minute solo 
video/sound work made at the ncet in ’75).

the cd booklet features liner notes by the composer as well as paintings 
he made in the late 50’s.

sounds have always been attached to some real and material object that 
emanated them, followed the same course as their source. but with the 
advent of tape and recorders after wwii, this was no longer true. sounds 
no longer would be derived from what one saw or could see. with the tape 
recorder musicians could revel in unknown worlds of sound. and that we 
did, splicing, re-ordering, reversing, speeding up and slowing down 
sounds to see what we could find or create. with the sounds a tape 
recorder could make, the mind would imagine new unseen objects with 
unheard-of-before sounds because the sounds did not come from an object 
one could see. unknown objects would be evoked from new sounds and these 
new unknown objects lay in the mind's imagination.

furthermore, inertia and speed always had a hand in the shape of sound, 
how it began and ended. thanks to magnetic tape, a sound could start and 
stop and last longer and be louder than could a sound from a real 
object. to this extent it paralleled what a musician did when he made a 
musical sound, struck one or shaped one into a melody. but musique 
concrete were sounds drawn from non-musical things, any thing, and could 
be altered to resemble no thing anyone had even known, seen, or heard. 
then there were rhythms, new and strange, beyond what a human could 
accomplish. manipulating tape sounds produced accidentally and 
unpredictably incomprehensible and unimaginable rhythms. it was in 1957 
in ann halprin's basement studio that i put together my first musique 
concrete piece for her branch dance.

around this time i started taking and printing photographs, explored oil 
painting and entered the sfmoma annual with a 4x4 ft 
painting/construction of piano keys, undershirts and paint tubes. 1961 
saw a 6 month run of helen adam's ballad opera san francisco's burning 
for which i played my piano score of 60 songs.

this new world of sound was expanded further when don buchla created in 
1963 his first and glorious 100 series synthesizer and installed it in 
the sf tape music center at 321 divisadero st. the sequencer--the name 
meant something completely different from later sequencers-- hooked me. 
it made rhythms that were fast, rare, and instantly changeable. the 
syncopations possible were terrific. my first small piece was used for 
''the lovers" scene in totentanz.

soon after, the tape center and the buchla box were moved to mills 
college where pauline oliveros and then tony gnazzo became its 
caretakers. the doors to the studio there were never locked then; i 
would reserve the 8pm time slot and stay as long as i wanted. 
occasionally i would find nothing and go home early and dejected. i had 
no mastery over this magical machine.

i took my first discoveries to a party; everyone was fascinated. the sf 
art institute asked me to play them at noon for the students. painter 
lee adair asked if i'd play them at her opening, leading to a long 
stream of openings including two very large ones for the museum of 
modern art. the usual string trio was now replaced by four huge rock and 
roll speakers in the four corners of the marble rotunda; the sound 
spread out into the halls and galleries. i found one man dressed in a 
business suit sitting smack in front of one of those behemoths; god 
knows what he was experiencing. one elegant elderly lady passing me said 
the music was 'sexual'. i would never argue the point.

in my nights at mills over the next three years i recorded 200 half hour 
reels of sounds that i would use at parties, openings, exhibits, films, 
theater, ballet, even a saks 5th ave fashion show by oscar de la renta. 
i have used only a fraction of these reels. so much needs to be 
transferred to semi-permanent medium.

james broughton, not long after i'd scored his film the bed, put me in 
touch with a fellow student, carlos carvajal, who needed a composer for 
the work he was choreographing for the sf ballet. he described the 
scenes i would score and explained a time-sensitive situation. i spent 
the following nights into the mornings at mills combining musique 
concrete and buchla synthesized sounds into the 40 minute score, taking 
segments into carlos's sessions with his dancers to see if they worked. 
in a month, during which my son was born, we were done. totentanz opened 
april 1 st, 1967 at the s.f opera house. a few patrons walked out in the 
third section, as i expected, where the sounds were mostly sine waves 
and not very rhythmic. carlos left the sf ballet to form his own 
company, dance spectrum. he revived totentanz in the spectacular space 
of grace cathedral in feb 1971 and repeated it every other year until 
'82. the gothic atmosphere and 7 -second echo did wonders. after the 
show i hawked my lps of the music. only somewhere near 300 copies 
circulated.

in the mid 60's hi-fi manufacturers added quadraphonic sound to home 
systems. so i decided to make my next ballet for carlos quadraphonic. 
since the mills tape studio had only two, not four, ampex machines, it 
meant recording sounds from one machine to the other to make tape i, 
then doing the same to make tape ii, keeping in mind the sounds of the 
two tapes, for they had to mesh when played together. to check the mesh 
i had to play the two tapes on the two machines making sure they started 
together precisely. if something didn't mesh, i had to go back, record 
or erase sounds on one tape and then put on the other tape to listen to 
them again to check the mesh. things got even hairier further into the 
20 minute score. a lot of time was spent lifting off and placing on the 
source tapes and the two master tapes; sometimes i'd lose track which 
recorder had which tape. on this cd the 4 tracks of the awakening have 
been combined down to two.

in 1973, the national center for experiments in television had an 
opening for a composer-in-residence. when i inquired, it was suggested i 
score a video that stephen beck, inventor of his beck direct video 
synthesizer, was working on. one day i remember, pierre schaeffer, 
practically the founder of musique concrete, was visiting the n.c.e.t. 
the next day i was hired. the buchla synthesizer there was the next 
generation, the 200 series. it inspired me much less then the 100 
series, whose sounds seemed to reflect the earth and nature, animals and 
primitive mysteries from the ground. the 200 series made more 
electronic, pure sine waves, cold. it was difficult finding 
satisfaction; still i ended up scoring a 40 minute piece of scenes in 
the woods, then five more works which were broadcast on pbs.

one, "see is never all the way up" was by artist william roarty. it was 
dark with an amorphous form, with little color and little movement 
except for its outline of shimmering dots. what to do? serve music with 
its own momentum or serve the momentum of the image? since sound relates 
to its source, i chose the latter, and made a sound that shimmered and 
barely moved. the sound made me think i was on a train listening to the 
track. i kept tied to roarty's image longer than i expected i could or 
should, but as often happens, what first seems too odd eventually can 
become intriguing and attractive.

just before the n.c.e.t. died in 1975, i hooked 2 wires from the buchla 
box to larry templeton's fantastic video mixer and discovered images of 
extraordinary color. some of them are in the la getty california video 
exhibit of 2008.

one evening i thought to do what many before me have done: stick 
something into the strings of the piano-maybe an eraser--to have a 
different sound. "rirlwa" & "the dog" came from these sessions. around 
this time bruce conner gave me his farfisa organ that he'd painted on. 
i'd mix it up with the prepared piano tunes. they were never to be heard 
by anyone until 30 years later by mitchell brown, the producer of these cds.

- wj 2007

...

disc 1 tracks 1, 6, 7, 9 are from tullium, the score to david william's 
environmental sculpture, hansen-fuller gallery, 1967
disc 1 track 2 is from the score for blood knot; american conservatory 
theatre 1970
disc 1 track 10 is the complete score for totentanz, a ballet by carlos 
carvajal 1967
disc 2 track 4 is the score for the awakening, a ballet by carlos 
carvajal 1968
disc 2 track 5 is the score for the roarty video see is never all the 
way up, national center for experiments in television (kqed) 1973

all tracks performed and recorded by warner jepson 1958-1973
laughter after, jail gate crazy, for trying out loud & the big putt 
assembled by mitchell brown, fall 2006
mastered by thomas dimuzio at gench studios, san francisco, ca, 2008
produced by mitchell brown

all paintings (1957-1960) and photographs (2006) by warner jepson
video synthesizer photos are stills from a video made at the ncet, 1975, 
by warner jepson
design by ben wolfinsohn

special thanks: ben wolfinsohn, thomas dimuzio, erik hoffman, joseph 
hammer, ken lee, don buchla, larry templeton, and rodney and his 
fantastic plastic record shop (where in 2002 the $100 totentanz lp was 
acquired, planting the seed for this release)