Electronic Music 1955-1984 [2LP]

Ernest Berk fled Nazi Germany for London, where for some three decades he built electronic and musique concrète works in home studios, often to score his own expressionist dance pieces. He shared the bill with Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram at the 1968 Queen Elizabeth Hall electronic concert, yet died in obscurity. Moving from tape manipulation and radio interference to tone and white-noise generators, he worked with a strict economy of sources, always centered on rhythm, pulse and percussive loops.

This double LP from Sub Rosa collects ten works spanning 1962 to 1980, including the kettle-lid percussion of "Gemini (Les Amies), Op. 52."

Track listing

A1. Gemini (Les Amies), Op. 52 (1962)
A2. Apparition, Op. 54 (1963)
A3. Ritual, Op. 204 (1976)
B1. Dream Sequence, Op. 111 (1968)
B2. 1936, In Commemoration of the Spanish Civil War, Op. 56 (1964)
C1. 126, Op. 126 (1969)
C2. Osterglocken, Op. 221 (1980, Bourges version)
C3. In Your Image, Op. 43 (1963, extended version)
D1. Opus 201, Op. 201 (1976)
D2. Nocturne (While I was asleep), Op. 163 (1972)

Other editions

• Electronic Music 1955-1984 [2CD]