Household Ink Releases New Music from the 80s

Richard Dunlap performing “Intersphere” In Santa Barbara (from the press release for his new album)

I left the “think jar” of General Research Corporation in Santa Barbara, California, in 1981 to move the the more rarified (not to mention international) setting of Schlumberger-Doll Research in Ridgefield, Connecticut (while living in Stamford for easier access by rail to midtown Manhattan). Almost all of my concert and recital experiences on the West Coast involved performances at the University of California at Santa Barbara, primarily through Cal Performances. I was less aware of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, which may be why I never knew about Richard Dunlap and his Intersphere installation at the McCormick Gallery.

Dunlap performed on an arrangement of tube-based instruments in one corner of the gallery and a baby grand piano in another. The space itself was darkened to allow for projections on the walls. This was an early venture into what would be called “ambient” performances, which I would only encounter for myself after moving to New York and building up a library of ECM albums.

At the beginning of this month, Household Ink Records released Intersphere, an album of two of Dunlap’s performances. The track titles are “Intersphere” and “Fandance,” and both are somewhat shy of twenty minutes in duration. The CD of this album is now available through a Discogs Web page, while Amazon.com has created a download Web page, which, unfortunately, does not include the accompanying booklet. The good news, however, is that there is a Web page for the PDF file of the booklet on the Household Ink Web site.

ECM definitely set the context for listening to Intersphere. Indeed, this morning proved to be just the right follow-up to yesterday’s account of Relations, Thomas Strønen’s latest album, which will be released this coming Friday. While the “Intersphere” track amounts to an “auditory document” of experiencing the Intersphere installation, the “Fandance” track was created three years later as an “echo.” The performance again involved the sound tubes. However, this time the baby grand was replaced by a “piano harp” with an electric fan added to the mix.

Since I am well aware that not all readers share my enthusiasm for those that fly under the ECM flag, I shall simply remind readers that Intersphere is “the sort of thing that people who like that sort of thing will like!”