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Charlemagne Palestine
Holy 1 / Holy 2 / Holy 1+2

Album IT 2000 on Alga Marghen label
Electronic (Minimal, Experimental)

Double LP intended to allow the listener to recreate the environment resulting from the simultaneous playback of Holy 1 and Holy 2. Both composed in 1967, the complete 42 minutes of Holy 1 occupy the first disc, with the shorter Holy 2 fitting on side C. Side D features the music of Holy 1 and Holy 2 created in 1968 for Gus Solomon, a choreographer and student of Merce Cunningham. Hand numbered Edition of 380 copies. From Charlemagne Palestine's liner notes: "Holy1 and Holy2 were both recorded in NYC in 1967. I was reading Helmholz and listening to a lot of ethnic world music but I was also very immersed in the late night New York soundscape. Other nights, when I composed, I would build up a sound, oscillator by oscillator, then add ever so slightly to the oscillators, input tiny increments of white noise that would gradually make the sounds thicker and thicker until they were immense sacred machines humming like gargantuan Tibetan bees. I played them very very loud making all the room and objects in it resonate while outside all was quiet and sleeping. Holy1 & Holy2 were done in this way. Later on I was asked by Gus Solomons, a choreographer at New York University, to create a texture for a new dance work. As he was a student of Merce Cunningham he had the same habit of asking a composer to create a work without even hearing it until the performance. We just agreed on how long it would be, we chose something like 70 minutes, and in 1968 I brought both Holy 1 & 2 to the theatre to decide which one to use for the dance and found that for me, at that moment, each one was too thin played alone for such a big open space. And I finally tried the two sonorities together. They fit strangely but well. So I used them both and after that I played them sometimes separately and sometimes together and so Holy 1+2 became a work itself."

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