Laurie Anderson - Big Science Laurie Anderson

Laurie Anderson‘s 1982 debut album, Big Science, returns to vinyl for the first time in thirty years with a new red edition due April 9, 2021 on Nonesuch Records. The vinyl includes the re-mastered original album first released on CD for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Big Science on Nonesuch in 2007. In the early 1980s, Anderson was already respected as a conceptual artist and composer, adept at employing gear both high-tech and homemade in her often violin-based pieces, and she was a familiar figure in the cross-pollinating, Lower Manhattan music-visual art-performance circles from which Philip Glass and David Byrne also emerged. While working on her now-legendary seven-hour performance art/theater piece United States, Part I–IV, she cut the spare ‘O Superman (For Massenet)’, an electronic-age update of 19th century French operatic composer Jules Massenet’s aria ‘O Souverain’, for the tiny New York City indie label 110 Records. In the UK, DJ John Peel picked up a copy of this very limited-edition 33? RPM 7” and spun the eight-minute-plus track on BBC Radio 1. The exposure resulted in an unlikely #2 hit, lots of attention in the press, and a worldwide deal with Warner Bros. Records. ’Cause when love is gone, theres always justice. And when justice is gone, theres always force. And when force is gone, theres always Mom. Hi Mom! At the time of its original release, the NME wrote of Big Science, “There’s a dream-like, subconscious quality about her songs which helps them work at deeper, secret levels of the psyche.” With instrumentation ranging from tape loops to found sounds to bag pipes, Big Science anticipated the tech-savvy beats, anything-goes instrumentation, and sample-based nature of much contemporary electronic and dance music. On the album’s twenty-fifth anniversary, Uncut noted, “The broader themes of alienation and disconnection still resonate, while Anderson’s use of loops and traditional/synthesized instrumentation is prescient.” Anderson is one of Americas most renowned – and daring – creative pioneers. Her work, which encompasses music, visual art, poetry, film, and photography, has challenged and delighted audiences around the world for over 40 years. Anderson released her first album with Nonesuch Records in 2001, the critically lauded Life on a String. Her subsequent releases on the label include Live in New York (2002), Homeland (2010), the soundtrack to Anderson’s acclaimed film Heart of a Dog (2015), and her Grammy-winning collaboration with Kronos Quartet, Landfall (2018). Additionally, Anderson’s virtual-reality film La Camera Insabbiata, with Hsin-Chien Huang, won the 2017 Venice Film Festival Award for Best VR Experience, and, in 2018, Skira Rizzoli published her book All the Things I Lost in the Flood: Essays on Pictures, Language and Code, the most comprehensive collection of her artwork to date. Track Listing: "From the Air" "Big Science" "Sweaters" "Walking & Falling" "Born, Never Asked" "O Superman (for Massenet)" "Example #22" "Let X=X/It Tango"