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Persistence of Sound
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Hemlock Stone

by Richard Orton

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Comes with 8-page booklet containing full liner notes

    Includes unlimited streaming of Hemlock Stone via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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Kiss 06:45
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Clock Farm 06:37
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about

Persistence of Sound celebrates the composer Richard Orton (1940–2013) with a selection of electroacoustic and computer music from across his career.

Orton is known for developing early electronic music in the UK, establishing the country’s first university-based electronic music studio, writing seminal texts on tape composition, then overseeing the transition from analogue tape to computer-aided composition.

In 1986 Orton introduced the UK’s first Music Technology course, and authored music software as co-founder of the influential Composers Desktop Project (CDP).

As a composer, Orton’s music often ranged beyond electroacoustic music – the focus of this album. He was a founding member of Gentle Fire – the electronic music ensemble including Hugh Davies and Graham Hearn – and of the Monteverdi Choir.

The earliest piece here is Kiss from 1968, using open reel tape machines and contact microphones, often pulling the recordings through the tape heads manually at varying speeds.

The most recent work on this album is its near title track, Three Monoliths: No.1 The Hemlock Stone, from 2004. This is the only piece on this collection to use tools developed by the CDP – a composers’ collective responsible for generating a vast collection of non-real time signal processing software.

credits

released March 24, 2023

Music by Richard Orton
Mastering by Nima Aghiani
Notes by Nicholas Melia
Design by Matthew Young

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all rights reserved

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about

Richard Orton Loughborough, UK

As a composer, performer, educator, programmer, and author, the contribution of Richard Orton (1940–2013) to the development of electroacoustic tape and computer music in the UK cannot be overstated.

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