In the late 60s and early 70s, Philip Glass and Tony Conrad, along with John Cale and LaMonte Young, Terry Riley and others, were closing the gap between that blissed-out eternal mantra and the side door of rock. Indeed, Glass himself tried his hand by producing early 80s new wave / trance / rock outfit Polyrock and a transplanted Robert Fripp had started League Of Gentlemen but there was the other side of the coin: a new burgeoning minimal underground. There were definitely stars, like Glenn Branca, whose ensemble was in turn a spawn to the new rock. Lee Ranaldo, Ned Sublette, Thurston Moore and others all had a hand in this new minimalism of Branca’s, which was injected with a blast of rock power and in some reactionary circles was dubbed Maximalism. Rhys Chatham was also a rising star, he straddled the rock and new music circles with a certain aplomb, eventually landing in France, without many recorded documents available.

By the late 80s most of this had been forgotten, including one amazing character in particular, Arnold Dreyblatt. Dreyblatt only had one record, ‘Nodal Excitations’ (on the mostly post-AACM jazz label India Navigation), before he packed and moved to Berlin, where he concentrated on his other activities, making only two more records over the next 10 years. For those who caught the action, Arnold was the man. He was more rock that any of the others combined and he was also the only one to really tap into that massive proto-minimal sound that Conrad had squelched out of his tin-contact mic violin in the early 60s. Indeed, in the early 70s after being in school in Buffalo, where Conrad taught, Dreyblatt moved into Manhattan to work for Young, where he witnessed first-hand and listened first-ear to those legendary recordings of The Theatre Of Eternal Music. He became interested in long string sounds and bought a bass that he wired with piano wire. By hitting the strings instead of bowing them, Dreyblatt was able to get those ringing overtones but he also had added something new: pure rhythm. Dreyblatt couldn’t get the rock singles he’d grown up with out of him and couldn’t become the full on new-music man that seemed to be a requirement in the 70s.

What you have here is the first ever LP reissue of Arnold Dreyblatt’s freshman record, a slice of minimal history that is still as potent now, if not more, as it was in 1998 and 1981 before it. It was a lighthouse that was aiming the wrong way when the tugboat came by but now it’s shining right in your face.