La Monte Young / Marian Zazeela | Dream House 78′ 17″

La Monte Young / Marian Zazeela 

Dream House 78′ 17″

San Francisco, USA: Superior Viaduct: 2024

12” vinyl LP, 78:17

Edition size unknown

Dream House 78′ 17″ was originally released in 1974 on Shandar records, a Parisian label specializing in avant-garde recordings by the likes of Albert Ayler, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Steve Reich, Sunny Murray, Philip Glass, Charlemagne Palestine, Alan Silva, Pandit Pran Nath, Terry Riley, Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra. 

Housed in the basement of an art gallery where the founders worked, the label’s headquarters were flooded in 1979, precipitating its early demise. Much of their stock was destroyed, making many of their titles scarce and expensive on the secondary market. 

Before this 2024 reissue, copies of Dream House 78′ 17″ were selling for upwards of $500 on Ebay. 

It is among the more unusual releases from the label, featuring almost forty minutes per side, for a total duration of 78' 17", an LP length unheard of at the time. Young writes in the liner notes that "Time is so important to the experiencing and understanding of the music in the record that every effort was made to make the record last as much as the original master tapes”.

The Theatre of Eternal Music was a group formed byYoung in New York City in 1962, initially consisting of himself, Marian Zazeela, Angus MacLise, and Billy Name. Later incarnations of the group included a pre-Velvet Underground John Cale and Tony Conrad, as well as Terry Riley, Terry Jennings, Rhys Chatham, Jon Gibson and others. 

The group’s "dream music" explored drones and pure harmonic intervals, employing sustained tones and electric amplification in lengthy, all-night performances.

Dream House 78' 17" is a studio album featuring guest performances by Jon Hassell on trumpet and Garrett List on trombone.  

The A-side features "13 I 73 5:35 – 6:14:03 PM NYC”, a work in which the group accompanies three sine waves. Their lack of harmonic content makes accompanying them extremely difficult.

The B-side composition "Drift Study 14 VII 73 9:27:27–10:06:41 PM NYC (39" 14")", is played entirely by sine wave generators.