New releases last four weeks: Modern Classical

Review: "One might thus regard the Welsh rarebit as a Machine in which a process is applied to the conditioning and perception of the world of bread and cheese." Suffice to say, John White might not have had the same ideas about what constitutes Machine Music back in 1976 as you do today. This is also the first time we've ever managed to get a reference to Welsh rarebit into the first line of writing about a record, so everyone is learning something today. "The Machines" White refers to are the individual tracks themselves, all recorded between 1967 and 1972 and all comprising different combinations of a thing. Six pairs of "bass melody instruments" made 'Autumn Countdown Machine', different permutations of "the articulations 'ging, gang, gong, gung, ho!'" comprise 'Jews Harp Machine'. And 'Son of Gothic Chord' is crafted from the sequential chord progression of four keyboard players, spanning an octave. Conceptual experimental and wildly imaginative stuff on the borderline of electronica, abstract, mathematical and something otherworldly.