In the early 1970s San Diego was a sleepy Southern California Navy town on the Mexican border and a seemingly unlikely gathering point for some of the most innovative, unclassifiable American artists of their era. Yet the presence of Harry Partch - hobo composer, iconoclast and inventor of instruments such as the Harmonic Canon and Quadrangularis Reversum - and a newly established and highly experimental music department at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) ushered in a revolution that was as much social as it was musical. Drawing from the occult, self-realization and radical political movements of 70s Southern California, these artists sought to dismantle the established control systems of American life, looking to the future even as they sometimes referenced a distant, idyllically imagined past. In their pursuit of “Irrelevant Music” - Kenneth Gaburo’s term for an untainted music free of constraint and compromise - these disparate artists constitute a shadow history of American experimental music far removed from the European and East Coast models of the time. Sonic Meditations, compositional linguistics, microtonality, invented instruments, cutting edge electronics, underwater synthesizers, Tibetan throat singing, environmental sound and pure noise were their tools. My 2023 book, Alien Territory: Radical, Experimental and Irrelevant Music in 1970s San Diego, presents the story. In this collection are the sounds. 

13_ Joseph Julian – Windows and Clouds (1973) _M02

21_Kenneth Gaburo – Ringings_M

11_ Warren Burt, Pauline Oliveros, Berg – Or, My Name is Country .. (1972)_M02

10__ Allen Strange – Switchcraft (1970)_M03

8_Harry Partch – Two Studies on Ancient Greek Scales (1968)_M02

14_  Kiva – Pure Intellect Serpent Power _ Excerpt_ (1976)_M02

17_  Joji Yuasa – My Blue Sky in Southern California (1976)_M02

12_Citizens Band – Song 5_M02

7_ Warren Burt -  French Fried Minds  (1974)_M03

15_Mizelle – Polyphonies II_M02

New tracks tagged #Improvised