![]() They were the culmination of his mature style. Crazy Nigger, Evil Nigger, and Gay Guerrilla form a trio of pieces that occupies a high point in Eastman’s compositions. ![]() Unlike today’s instant access to music, at that time each new copy represented a time commitment, since it took as long to copy a piece as it was long, while also removing itself further from the original recording with a resultant deterioration in sound quality. Instead, they were shared on cassettes, copied and passed from one admirer to another, a kind of underground musical distribution by aficionados. ![]() However, that was not to be, and they, and other pieces of Eastman’s, were unavailable commercially. While using process and rhythmic patterns, there is a flexibility that lends a breathing, organic feel to his music, a muscularity missing in a lot of other music from that time ith the re-emergence of his powerful music, a missing gap in the history of contemporary music has been filled.Ĭreated in the late 1970s, these three pieces should have been released on vinyl at the time they were written. His pieces straddle the two main styles of minimal music-rhythmic/pulse driven music (Steve Reich and Philip Glass) and spectral drone music (La Monte Young and Phill Niblock). To quote brilliant Mary Jane Leach liner notes: "He wrote what can be categorized as minimal music, but also wrote “post-minimal” music before minimal music was fully established. All three works generate their epic soundscapes through adamantly restated patterns and interlocking canons, not fragmenting now, but preaching urgent truths. ![]() This is first time any of Eastman’s music has been available on LP, with the three extended pieces for four pianos, Gay Guerrilla, Evil Nigger and Crazy Nigger, all written and preformed around 1980. He was Afro-American and gay, a composer who rocked the cerebral world of process music with his explosions of free improvisation. It’s little wonder that Julius Eastman (who died in 1990 under unexplained circumstances), remained the supreme underground composer. Including printed inner sleeve housing a Nagaoka anti-static record sleeve, plus an original insert that functions as Obi. ![]()
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