Penultimate Press is proud to release a unique vinyl of the only known recordings by Danish artist Poul Gernes.
Poul Gernes only ever recorded just under 20 minutes of music. His entire musical production is therefore on this LP. The recording was done on a Tandberg Recorder at Poul Gernes’ house in the south of Sweden in 1969. He is playing an old harmonium salvaged from a local primary school. The result is an informal quasi-drone work, which, along with the ambient sounds and domestic interference, comes across as a snapshot of the recording itself, a sonic Polaroid.
Poul Gernes’ major musical inspirations at the time were J.S. Bach, Terry Riley and Gregorian chant. An alleged encounter with John Cage and close collaborations with, for instance, composer and Fluxus artist Henning Christiansen are likely to have encouraged the musical endeavour. During the 1960s Poul Gernes also made a large number of happenings and performances, together with amongst others Per Kirkeby and Joseph Beuys.
‘Poul Gernes’ comes as limited edition one sided lp of 400 copies. A beautiful etching of a Gernes painting appears on the b-side and all is packaged in a full colour sleeve retaining the nature of the recording itself. Also included is an insert with a list of Poul’s hypothetical track titles. [Source]
[via Martha Podell in Stockholm]
NEWMUSIC.DK 