Alvin Curran Natural History

Black Truffle is extremely proud to present the first-ever vinyl issue of Alvin Curran’s Natural History, originally released on cassette by Edition Giannozzo Berlin in 1983. A founding member of the radical electronic improvising group Musica Elettronica Viva, since the early 1970s Curran has developed an idiosyncratic body of solo work that occupies a unique position in the post-Cageian experimental tradition. Singularly undogmatic, Curran’s work takes the Cageian experience as the starting point for a radical openness to all forms of music and sound. Refusing to abstract music from its human functions, his work draws on existing musical genres, cutting-edge electronics, and environmental recordings to craft compositions that mimic the hazy texture of everyday life, moving from the abstract to the referential, from the observational to the emotive, from the structured to the random. As he reflects in the liner notes written especially for this edition: ‘This infinite stream of sound became my life and my music all at once’.