Slapping Pythagoras

by Tony Conrad

Slapping Pythagoras cover art
  • Type: Album
  • Released: 11 August 1995
  • Label: Table of the Elements
  • Country: United States
  • Length: 42:51
  • Community rating: 3.85/5 from 5 ratings

Album Notes & Community Reviews

'Slapping Pythagoras' is a fierce, uncompromising attack on Western harmonic traditions directly from drone pioneer Tony Conrad. Armed with amplified, heavily treated violins and strict just intonation tuning, Conrad generates massive, abrasive walls of acoustic feedback and relentless microtonal friction. The recording forcibly re-established his crucial historical role in the development of American minimalism, directly influencing a new generation of harsh noise artists.

Genres

Descriptors: Avant Garde, repetitive, avant-garde, instrumental, dissonant, noisy, experimental, minimal, long-form, droning, strings, textured

Tracklist

  1. Pythagoras, Refusing To Cross The Bean Field At His Back, Is Dispatched By The Democrats (24:44)
  2. The Heterophony Of The Avenging Democrats, Outside, Cheers The Incineration Of The Pythagorean Elite, Whose Shrill Harmonic Agonies Merge And Shimmer Inside Their Torched Meeting House (18:07)

Credits

  • Gene Coleman - bass clarinet
  • Alexandria Gelencser - cello, violin
  • Dylan Posa - guitar
  • John Corbett - guitar
  • Kevin Drumm - guitar
  • Thymme Jones - guitar
  • David Grubbs - guitar, performer [pillow]
  • Terri Kapsalis - violin

More from Tony Conrad: full discography