The vinyl version back in stock!

The Expanding Universe is the classic 1980 debut album by composer and computer music pioneer Laurie Spiegel. The album is reissued here for the first time in a massively expanded two-CD set, containing all four original album tracks plus an additional 15 tracks from the same period, nearly all previously unreleased. Some of the already wellknown works included in this set are Patchwork, the complete Appalachian Grove series, and Kepler’s Harmony of the Worlds, which was included on the golden record launched on board the Voyager spacecraft. The pieces comprising The Expanding Universe combine slowly evolving textures with the emotional richness of intricate counterpoint, harmony, and complex rhythms (John Fahey and J. S. Bach are both cited as major influences in the original cover’s notes), all built of electronic sounds. These works, often grouped with those of Terry Riley, Phil Glass, Steve Reich, differ in their much shorter, clear forms. Composed and realized between 1974 and 1977 on the GROOVE system developed by Max Mathews and F.R. Moore at Bell Laboratories, the pieces on this album were far ahead of their time both in musical content and in how they were made.

The package also includes an extensive 24-page booklet with notes by Laurie Spiegel and period photos. The LP reissue mirrors the original tracklisting (Side A: Patchwork, Old Wave, Pentachrome. Side B: The Expanding Universe), but adds A Folk Study to the end of Side A to further even out the sides. A download code for lossless or lossy download of the entire 2CD collection is included with each LP.