The Great Learning cover
Released

Formed by Cardew, along with fellow composers Michael Parsons and Howard Skempton, The Scratch Orchestra was a large-scale collective that worked from graphic scores and embraced the possibilities of improvisation; they were also, at least in part, politically engaged, forming a Scratch Ideology Group in the early seventies to further their studies of socialist texts. Works like The Great Learning enact their collectivist politics at the level of sound – on the a-side, great masses of chorus voices sailing out across rumbling, plosive drums; the b-side resolves to something calmer, and those massed voices skirl and bob around in a sea of sound. Somewhere in there, you might hear the formative rumblings of folks as diverse as David Jackman of Organum, or Brian Eno.

Jon Dale

Suggestions
Still Smiling cover

Still Smiling

Blixa Bargeld, Teho Teardo
Gli Occhi Freddi Della Paura [Original Soundtrack] cover

Gli Occhi Freddi Della Paura [Original Soundtrack]

Ennio Morricone, Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza
The Vessels cover

The Vessels

The Makers Of The Dead Travel Fast
Perpetuum Mobile cover

Perpetuum Mobile

Einstürzende Neubauten
No Answer cover

No Answer

Michael Mantler, Carla Bley, Jack Bruce, Robert Wyatt