Description
Henry Flynt took a high-brow approach to so-called low-brow music. Combining sounds from his native North Carolina with an avant-garde sensibility honed in New York City’s loft scene in the 1960s, Flynt created what he describes as « new American ethnic music. » As a student of Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath alongside La Monte Young and Terry Riley, an associate of the Fluxus movement, and even a live collaborator with The Velvet Underground, Flynt was a part of one of the 20th century’s richest art and music milieus.
Graduation, recorded between 1975 and 1979, was meant to be the debut of his avant-garde hillbilly music. The album’s title track is a slow, twisted ballad that unfolds like a funeral dream over dirge-like country riffs. « Celestial Power, » the album’s 20-minute closing track, is an entrancing minimalist composition performed strictly with oscillating vibrato guitar. As Flynt explains, « I aspire to a beauty which is ecstatic and perpetual, while at the same time being concretely human and emotionally profound. »
Shelved upon its completion in 1980, Graduation was not released until after the turn of the century. In 2013, it still sounds years ahead of its time.
Track Listing:
- Graduation
- A Portrait
- Lonesome Train Dreams
- Double Spindizzy
- No Rights
- Virginia Trance
- Conga
- Celestial Power