Marc Barreca - Recordings 1978-1979 (2017)

There’s material strewn across both plates that appeared on Tape-Recordings 1977-1983, but the vast majority is practically unheard by anyone as the originals were issued in super limited quantity and are nigh-on impossible to track down 2nd hand. If you were seduced by Barreca’s Twilight [1980] reissue on his Savant bandmate K. Leimer’s Palace Of Lights, then this one’s a reel must-have.

Perhaps best described as more stripped down and off-kilter than the material on Twilight, Barreca’s Recordings 1978-1979 demonstrate his solo sound taking gaseous shape inspired by the Brian Eno school of ambient minimalism. In the Raw Fish and Green Tea / Surrogate Religions recordings hear him mashing Eno’s inspirations with simultaneous influence, as the title may suggest, from far eastern modes of tuning and spiritual thought, resulting a spaciously but elaborately textured side of frolicking rhythmic electronics and cascading, bittersweet tones swept with glowing chimes and lush microtonal arpeggios, at best in the extended closing whorl of At The Carnival.

The wistful Eastern motifs also percolate into Currents [1979] which again, as the title implies, is all about a natural chi or flow of energy nodding to Eastern schools of thought. Here the music is detectably more layered and frothing with an aesthetic that would later come to the fore in Twilight, making for remarkably sublime moments on In Far Cathay’s spiritualised swoon of flutes and bubbling electronics, or recalling OG Oblique Graph as much as Dopplereffekt in the sheer contours of Duet, and Franco Falsini’s sky-licking kosmiche on Visitors Part III, one of three bonus pieces not found on the original tape (which is impossible to find anyway!).