Julius Eastman - The Nigger Series (Special Edition) (2018)

Created in the late 1970s, these three pieces should have been released on vinyl at the time they were written. However, that was not to be, and they, and other pieces of Eastman’s, were unavailable commercially. Instead, they were shared on cassettes, copied and passed from one admirer to another, a kind of underground musical distribution by aficionados. 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. Crazy Nigger, Evil Nigger, and Gay Guerrilla form a trio of pieces that occupies a high point in Eastman’s compositions. They were the culmination of his mature style. Crazy Nigger is a sprawling sonic study, the last section exploring canonic form both harmonically and rhythmically, using the same process as James Tenney’s Spectral Canon for Conlan Nancarrow, but notated in a more intuitive way.
In the most transcendent sense, it's music that occupies its very own place, a magical soundworld all of its own.

what you have here is one of the most important and beautiful albums of the late 20th century - if you haven't heard it before, geez you're in for a treat...