I finally got that
Gruppen/Punkte disc.
1) Surprised,... I thought it was Wergo.
2) The packaging is infuriating. I am so sick of these stupid fold-outs, with no sleeve for the cd so it can get scratched or what not.
3) I guess I'm so used to the Abbado that this recording knocked me a bit. It felt like a completely different experience than the DG. Surely, the recording is much clearer, and the playing sounds more...uh...'important'?? Still, I really get the sense of 'joy' in the DG version that I just didn't hear here, as if this recording really were 'serious business'. I will most certainly have to go back and forth here.
I did enjoy the more up front electric guitar here. Yes, one certainly can hear a lot more stuff here. And the spatial aspect can sort of be heard (maybe this was part of my 'huh?' here,... the recording venue seems to have an (unobtrusive) 'bubble' around it so one can hear things closer and farther away.
For me,
Punkte was the BigDeal here. What a strange 30mins.! It feels like music is being 'raked', a very strange 'trawling' sound that really made me feel 'dark', a very industrial, post-war Germany of hopelessness,... this is the most depressing BA Zimmermann piece i've ever heard!

It reminded me of the buzzing whoosh of radiation saturated Chernobyl, a bleak landscape of industrial blackness. I was really kind of creeped out by the music (in a good way of course), it really had a strange, subterranean sound. And that 'grating' 'raking' sound was very original,... it remind me of some industrial aspects of Xenakis. It reminds me of the Xenakis of
Terretekhtorh and
Nomos Gamma.
And, at @30mins., it's pretty long and involved too. And, seeing as it was revised very late, it, I suppose, has some late 'thoughts' in it, and one surely is able to get a snapshot of KS through this piece: it is a very complex impression, let me assure you!

This cd left me scratching my head.
Gruppen I can figure out, but
Punkte is like impenetrable (a very imposing piece),... almost reminds me of some Zorn in its blackness. Yea, I just interpreted it as some of the blackest 'normal' music I've ever heard. It left a very chilling aftertaste.
Also, because of the dates of revision, it's impossible (for me) to think of this piece as being from the '50s or '60s,... I don't know, it just sounded like 'where DID this come from?'.
I'm wondering if I should have heard this music earlier in my studies. Hearing it now, after all the other raucous music I've exposed myself to, it is quite the head scratcher,... I just can't seem to 'place' it. Well, it's thought provoking to say the least.
