MORTON FELDMAN – Rothko Chapel / For Frank O’Hara (50th Anniversary Edition) – LP – 180g Vinyl [JAN 9]

LP – 180g Black Vinyl reissued to mark the album’s 50th Anniversary.

If you could actually hear an abstract expressionist painting, it would probably sound a lot like the work of Morton Feldman. And thats no accident: Feldman hung out in 50s and 60s New York with Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston (whose work graced the cover of Feldmans first album), and Robert Rauschenberg. Like the paintings of his visual artist peers, Feldmans work emphasised tonal colour over structure, rhythm, or melody, the traditional building blocks of music. It also employed the musical equivalent of painterly negative space with its use of silence and stasis; that Feldman and John Cale were enormous influences on each other will come as no surprise. So, it makes sense that Feldman would dedicate probably his two most celebrated compositions to two giants of the New York scene: abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, whose famous Chapel adorns this LPs front cover, and writer and critic Frank OHara, whose own work drew inspiration from the same sources as Feldmans.

Rothko Chapel and For Frank OHara first were released in 1976 on a seminal album from the Odyssey imprint on Columbia Records; for its 50th anniversary and first LP reissue, weve had it pressed on 180-gram black vinyl at Gotta Groove Records for the quietest listen achievable, using new transfers from the original master tapes. Profound, career-defining work that opened the door for latter-day ambient composers like Brian Eno to walk through.

Tracklist:

A: Rothko Chapel [25:33]

B: For Frank O’Hara [18:22]