COVER IMAGE
LP released: May 22, 2015

Tracklisting:
1. Harmonics
2. Addition
3. Slow Changes I
4. Slow Changes Ii
5. Nodal Excitation
6. Formation
7. Bow And Arrow
8. 8.Lucky Strike
ARNOLD DREYBLATT
NODAL EXCITATION
Label: DRAG CITY
Cat No: DC629
Barcode: 0781484062912
Packaging: LP (100g)

New York, early 80's, very early. Studio 54 is hosted by a hologram, the
Mudd Club is already an institution, and The Clash's first appearance
in New York is in a giant casino, with a full-sized Zeppelin at the door.
Not exactly a receptive pond for the next wave of adventurous music.
Some names did pop up, harkening to a past of lofts and all-night concert
events. In the late 60s and early 70s, Philip Glass, Tony Conrad,
along with John Cale and LaMonte Young, Terry Riley and others
were closing the gap between that blissed-out eternal mantra and the
side door of rock. Indeed, Glass himself tried his hand by producing
early 80's new/wave/trance/rock outfit Polyrock, and a transplanted
Robert Fripp had started League of Gentlemen. But there was the
other side of the coin, a new burgeoning minimal underground. There
were definitely stars, like Glenn Branca, whose ensemble was in turn
a spawn to the new rock. Lee Ranaldo, Ned Sublette, Thurston
Moore, and others all had a hand in this new minimalism of Branca's,
which was injected with a blast of rock power, and in some reactionary
circles, was dubbed Maximalism. Rhys Chatham was also a rising
star, he straddled the rock and new music circles with a certain aplomb,
eventually landing in France, without
many recorded documents available.
By the late 80's most of it had been
forgotten, especially one amazing
character, Arnold Dreyblatt. Dreyblatt
only had one record, Nodal Excitations
(on the mostly post-AACM
jazz label India Navigation), before
he packed and moved to Berlin, where
he concentrated on his other activities, making only two more records over the next 10 years. But for those who
caught the action, Arnold was the man. He was more rock that any of
the others 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 Young, where he witnessed first-hand, and listened
first-ear to those legendary recordings of the Theatre of Eternal
Music. He got interested 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. Dreyblatt couldn't get the rock singles
he'd grown up with out of him, and couldn't become the full-on new-music
man that seemed to be a requirement in the 70s, and it wasn't until
the 80s that the fence could be straddled, if not knocked over. It was
time to start a band.

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ARNOLD DREYBLATT
NODAL EXCITATION CD