72. Occasional Works (2003-2004)

An anthology of experimental and funny works. MPB (musica popular brasileira) is deconstructed and hilariously reassembled in “Oulipian Ipanemas” and “Bossa Blotto”. Experimental poets are remembered in “Vocabulary Requiem for Nicholas Zurbrugg” and “Jas Rhythms”. Corruscated electronic sound textures are explored in “And Pterodactyls Danced in Dewsbury”, the soundtracks for Elizabeth Block's films, and “Rule Gnu...” an improvisation with a wildly malfunctioning electronic keyboard. Wild improvisation with Catherine Schieve on Ecuadorian shaman's drum is also featured in “Shaman's Drum and Beat-Sliced Samples”, where the techno technique of beat slicing is taken to extremes.

69. Warren Burt - Eva Karczag - Dancehouse, Melbourne, 13 July 2002

This live performance for computer, voices, samples of hip-hop, CPE Bach, and Villa-Lobos, chord harmonica, music box springs, baritone ukelele, piano and footsteps marks the 25 th anniversary of the sound-movement collaboration of Burt and Karczag. Recorded live in performance at Dancehouse, the 50 minute piece covers a wide range of emotional territory, from conventional prettiness to noisy, scratchy textures, to some moments of ethereal beauty.

66. Five 23 Tone Pieces (2001-2002)

An obsession with a scale (23 tone equal temperament) regarded as useless by many produced 5 different pieces. “23 Tone Boom Boom” and “The Disco Fat Arkestra Live at the Café Montmartre, Madison” are fairly abstract, but funny, takes on techno and jazz. “The Family Supper” is a setting of a socialist realist poem. “Expanded Cinema - Mark 2" is a soundtrack for a multimedia presentation by Burt and filmmaker Dirk de Bruyn (which gives new meaning to the term “music concrete”), and “9 Out of 23" is a long drone piece for electronics, plucked strings, accordion, and Burt's collection of custom-made tuning forks.

63. Winter Solstice Mix (1999-2000)

One hour long live recording of the soundtrack to a multimedia performance by Burt and filmmaker Dirk de Bruyn. Using recordings for drums and electronics specially made by Burt and Ben (Metaphysician's Hammer) Chadabe, along with a table full of computers, toys, and penguin recordings, this is a sonic roller coaster ride.

59. Lost and Abducted (2000)

Hartley Newnham and Carolyn Connors star in “Abducted” a gruesome Sci Fi tale about alien abductions and breeding experiments. Text by Robert Randall, music by Burt, Newnham and Connors for computer processed voices, harmonic canon and tuning forks. “Lost” is Randall's staged updating of 19 th century bush ballads, set to dramatic recitation by Ian Holdaway and highly textured music by Burt. Contemporary music theatre at its most challenging.

51. Sound Installations 1998: Horsham, Warrnambool and Sale ( TWO CD )

Twelve pieces from three sound sculpture installations in Victorian country regions. The first CD has remixes of sounds from nine installations, including Burt's award winning “La Strega Bianca della Luna II” (also released on Innova), and Sines/Forks 3, featuring the legendary Al Wunder on percussion and Alison Thomson on flutes. The second CD mixes environmental sounds from the areas surrounding the galleries. Each consists of at least two or three layers of environmental sound, mixed to make a “faster” progression of events from the environment.

VISIT INNOVA WEBSITE for “SONIC CIRCUITS VI”

48. Four Experimental Computer Pieces (1995-97)

“Daisy Feeds the Temporal Piano Attractor” has a vintage historical electronic music machine (Daisy) caught in a feedback loop with a microtonal sampled piano. Can self-generating loops be musically intelligent? Only their hairdresser knows for sure. Microtonal drones with crunchiness abound in Burt's satirical take on Messiaen: “Vingt Enflures sur l'Enfant Melvin”; and the fake gamelan music of “Pi and the Square Root of 2 #1", which actually owes more to the Chudnovsky brothers (mathematical theorists) than to Bali, though it might sound the other way around.

43. Music from Movement 1993-1995

Back when interactivity had not yet become an empty buzzword, Burt was exploring the interface between sound and movement with a series of elegant, beautiful, and challenging soundscapes - all triggered off by the movements of his (“ageing, ungraceful” to quote one critic) body. Don Buchla's Lightning movement sensor controls a variety of samplers, analog synthesizers, and laptop computers. (Remember the 286 laptop that weighed 8 kg?) Seen in many performance venues in Melbourne (and around the world), this is the complete collection of these pioneering pieces.

41. Horizon Rerun (1994)

Burt and choreographic co-conspirator Eva Karczag have been making sound and movement magic happen together since 1977. This piece features Karczag's stream of consciousness poetry, environmental sounds, and a series of electric piano pieces by Burt. Karczag uses a theremin to trigger off electric piano sounds, Burt tracks her movement with a Buchla Lightning, and the two of them interact with the machines in an engrossing soundscape.

39. Chris Mann and Warren Burt: Collaborative Works 1977-1993 ( TWO CD )

The collaboration of Burt and Mann is legendary in Melbourne and international performance poetry circles. For almost two decades, they worked together on a series of gritty, uncompromising performances where Burt provided sonic environments as convoluted as Mann's multi-layered texts. Includes “Syntactic Switches” from 1977, an historical La Mama performance, as well as the forty members of the Astra Choir performing with an equal number of cassette recorders, resynthesizing the sounds of Pidgin and the audience's voices. “of course” and “anyway”, their two major collaborations from the late 80s, for live computer and voice, are also included here.

28. Music for Tuning Forks (1985-87)

Burt built his tuning forks in 1985 in order to explore microtonal tuning ideas. They quickly took on a life of their own, as their pure sine waves created glowing and warm washes of sound. The first three pieces for the forks show them off in a number of different contexts. “Improvisation in Two Ancient Greek Modes”, with Ernie Althoff, is a multitracked piece exploring ancient harmonies; “Voices, Tuning Forks and Accordion” is a much more contemporary take - the Astra Choir uses the forks to assemble long sustained clouds of sound, weaving their voices around the tuning forks' haunting sines. “Almond Bread Harmonies II” for five players is a very slow, almost metaphysical scanning of the Mandelbrot Matrix, a chaos pattern, to make a piece that is sparkling and calming at the same time.

24. Aardvarks IX (1982-84) ( FOUR CD )

Aardvarks IX was a two year project of Burt's, in which one of the first single board microcomputers was used to control an analog synthesizer that he built. This four CD set consists of a 2 hour cycle of pieces that vary from serial to tonal to chaotic to incredibly noisy; a one hour live performance for Australian environmental sounds and live electronics interacting with those sounds; and six versions of an early experiment in artificial intelligence where a computer program was instructed to compose and play an endless series of variations. As well of being of historical interest, these pieces swing.

23. Four Pieces for Radio (1981-3)

Wires, Texts, Acoustic Music, and Natural Rhythm were four pieces exploring acoustics, feedback, environmental sounds and interactivity, made for various Australian radio venues. “Acoustic Music” is a feedback piece made in a five story underground parking cylinder. “Natural Rhythm” uses sounds from an underwater microphone at St. Kilda Pier to control a synthesizer, creating a duet for tinkling electronic bells and shrimp. Are shrimp better composers than people? Listen to “Natural Rhythm” and judge for yourself. “Texts” uses a cut-up text and subjects it to very subtle electronic manipulation. “Wires” is a piece using four very long wires set up to feedback on themselves, and be resonated by an upright piano sound board.

20. Explorations of 31 (1981)

A set of four 15 minute drone pieces using the subharmonic series. Burt and Julian Driscoll had designed a frequency divider to produce precisely tuned subharmonic intervals. This piece, in which long stable chords hang in space, is the first outing of these modules. In performance the piece was played with loudspeakers swung on the ends of long chords, or with a dancer moving in front of the speakers, or with the audience moving about the space. A long lost and now recovered essential piece of tuning and synthesizer history.

18. Lo-Fi Melodic Electronics (1979-81)

Low technology, low humour, low volume characterize these pieces. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” is the sound track for an early performance by New York cross-cultural music legend Ned Sublette. It's a kind of automated medieval music that nods to minimalism. “Dr. Burt's Microtonal Disco-Fat Arkestra” is three badly played pop tunes (so bad they're really baaad!) in the style of the legendary California incompetence ensemble Fatty Acid (that Burt helped found)- one of the earliest pieces made with the Fairlight CMI; and “Leather Disco” is an attempt to out-disco Giorgio Moroder with a table full of electronic toys and cassette recorders.

17. Tasmanian "D" and Suite for Cheap Technology (1977-80)

In the 1970s, Burt was one of the pioneers of Melbourne's cassette culture. His work with Ron Nagorcka in the now legendary duo Plastic Platypus led to these solo pieces. “Tasmanian ‘D'” starts with the sound of a key ring and a single circular breathing ‘D' on a piccolo, and through multiple cassette recorders transforms them, in live performance, to a shrieking mass of shredded sound. “Suite for Cheap Technology” is a collection of pieces premiered at Melbourne's seminal Clifton Hill Community Music Centre, using lots of little electronic devices to create “electronic music that anyone could make.”

14. Two New York Drones (1979) ( TWO CD )

Two 45 minute long drones composed on the New York City subway, and exploring the depths of the subharmonic series. Burt and Julian Driscoll had built devices to generate precisely related frequencies, and in these pieces, Burt begins his exploration of long sustained dissonance. The pieces might be compared to La Monte Young's drone work of the same period, although at this time Burt had neither met Young, nor heard any of his music.

12. Le Grand Ni Symphony (1978)

Burt and Julian Driscoll designed and built Aardvarks VII, a digital composing machine made out of the simplest chips. Simple in concept, but powerful in execution, this microtonal music machine formed the basis for a 70 minute long symphonic piece (Glenn Branca wasn't the only person doing unorthodox symphonies in this period!), for live electronics. Performed all over Australia, Europe and the US it's in C Major, no less, and alternates high-speed minimalist melodics with the sounds of rattling metal signs activated by the electronics of Aardvarks VII.

10. Aardvarks V: Symphony (August 9 th ) (1977)

A single unaccompanied melody which lasts for an hour. Using Aardvarks IV, his homemade music computer and semi-intelligent composing machine, Burt steers his digital processes through the seas of musical structure, creating a polyphonic electronic single line melody. Think of a Bach solo cello partita updated with hard edged electronic sounds, elaborate spatial panning, and atonal and microtonal harmonies and you'll get the idea.

6. Aardvarks IV (1972-5)

Noise fans will love this one. One of Burt's major works, it's been called "the best electronic piece since the First World War." A long, violent fresco, it was made with Aardvarks IV, an almost intelligent composing machine that Burt built because he couldn't afford a computer at the time. Evolving from an uneasy drone into complex and roaring sounds, the piece rises to what seems like a climax, only to dissolve into a sense of mystery and curiosity. If you want to find out what the state of the art in electronic music technology was in the early 70s, here it is.