the portsmouth sinfonia - european education on 45

the portsmouth sinfonia in 1972 were a task force to re-claim (european) classical music for the overawed and frightened. blitheful dabblers, free improvisers and straight-edge masters teamed together for a completely new version of listening to and generating classical music: no sheets, no score, no master. they released four or five albums of dilletante readings of vintage prescriptions misinterpreting and construing completely unknown correlations. their music, of course, was a frightening challenge to listen to and it was great!

four or five albums, as mentioned before, were released to a completely unprepared audience and they were of course cut out and recycled to fabricate recyclable vinyl for genesis, gentle giant and generation X (all recycled some days later, i hope). though the portsmouth sinfonia included the likes of brian eno, nigel coombes and steve beresford they remained almost unknown. but some of the about 50 people involved still are at least an obscure part of the worldwide obscured community of obscurest musicians and really obscure and well-hidden activists the remaining remains of the portsmouth sinfonia still are planning to re-release most of their work and works on cd; but they will for some reason or an other forget this 7"-vinyl they forced some amateurish newbie-dj in 1981 to mix down using some of the (an)noises they had performed before: and even if they do not forget: here is a wunderful example of all things the portsmouth sinfonia had no premonition of.

here we go-go: both sides of the 45s: A is of course the classical muddly featuring the whole of the mountain grill, a song for europe and no wakyres ("wakyres"? - friends of ed.) and B is a hallelujah-mess.

the portsmouth sinfonia - on 45s and hallelujad
(mp3 / 320 kbps / 18 mb / 8 minutes / direct download)

german version with much more to say...