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2017 repress; 1996 . Automatic Writing compiles three early Robert Ashley works from 1967-79 - some of his most experimental works. Composed in recorded form over a period of five years, InchAutomatic WritingInch, originally issued on Lovely Music in 1979, is the result of Robert Ashley's fascination with involuntary speech. He recorded and analyzed the repeated lines of his own mantra and extracted four musical characters. The result is a quiet, early form of ambient music. The piece rather famously formed the basis for Nurse With Wound's A Missing Sense (1997). Steven Stapleton's commentary on the recording InchA Missing Sense was originally conceived as a private tape to accompany my taking of LSD. When in that particular state, Robert Ashley's 'Automatic Writing' was the only music I could actually experience without feeling claustrophobic and paranoid. We played it endlessly; it seemed to become part of the room, perfectly blending with the late night city ambiance and the 'breathing' of the building.Inch The piece features the voices of Ashley and Mimi Johnson, with electronics and Polymoog backing, with a switching circuit designed and built by Paul DeMarinis. InchPurposeful Lady Slow AfternoonInch and InchShe Was A VisitorInch are excerpts from an opera entitled InchThat Morning ThingInch, composed in 1966-67 as a result of Ashley's impulse to express something about the suicides of three friends. InchPurposeful Lady Slow AfternoonInch, originally issued in 1968, is a woman's description of a sexual experience. Ashley attempts Inchto demonstrate the dichotomy between the rational-whatever can be explained in words-and it's opposite-which is not irrational or a-rational, but which cannot be explained in words.Inch The lead voice performed by Cynthia Liddell, the processed back-up chorus, the recurring bell tone, and the pervading tape hiss, create an unsettli
