Gavin Bryars | The Sinking of the Titanic [live]

Gavin Bryars 

The Sinking of the Titanic [live]

Brussels, Belgium: Les Disques du Crepuscule, 1991

1:00:13 Audio CD

Edition size unknown

The original 1975 Obscure Records issue of this piece (remastered and collected in the new box set) is 24:28 long, in part because of the limitations of the format - fidelity loss occurs with a vinyl record beyond 25 minutes a side, because of the necessity of cutting the grooves so close together. 

With the advent of the Compact Disk format, Byars was able to release a recording of just over an hour, without having to break it up over two sides of an LP. This is a live performance in a disused water tower in the Chateau D'Eau, Bourges, from April of 1990. 

The musicians performed from the basement of the three storey tower, where the public heard the pieces through a specially designed sound system on the second floor, after the sound had passed through the cavernous top floor.

The recording was released by Les Disques du Crépuscul, an independent record label founded in 1980 by Michel Duval and Annik Honoré, the journalist best known for her relationship with Joy Division’s Ian Curtis. The label distributed Factory Records artists in Belgium and also worked with Cabaret Voltaire, Mikado, Anna Domino, and Michael Nyman (Obscure #6). 

The new Obscure Records box set is easily the most I’ve spent on a single music purchase (even divided by ten for each LP). Previously that distinction was held by this disc. I had been searching for the record for years and finally came across it the reissue by chance. I think I paid $50 for it, which was more than twice the going rate for catalogue compact disks, and three times the price of a new release. Taking inflation into account the amount is probably closer to a hundred dollars. But I didn’t hesitate. A couple of years later, it was reissued in a broader release.

“A number of new elements were used in this performance. The strings comprise two violas and double bass, rather than the string sextet of three violins, two cellos and bass, and additional music was written for them. Percussion was used extensively for specific effects - the hymn tune on marimba, the woodblocks giving the sequence of morse, the use of the bell and bass drum relating to specific aural images. The wind instruments gave a sequence of hymn possibilities as well as delay effects. Quite dramatically, a bass clarinet ‘lament’ was added in homage to the young Scottish piper who died in the disaster. Specific sound effects were added relating to the descriptions given by survivors of particularly striking sounds. There are reminiscences about the disaster from two survivors, Miss Eva Hart and Miss Edith Rusell.”

- Gavin Bryars, liner notes to this edition