Xenakis Tape-Music MP3

The website of PS1/MoMA, wps1.org, is Byzantine, which is to say, yes, it may be hell to navigate, but that’s only partially because of an interface that employs pulldown menus, javascript popops and nested subdirectories to seeming crosspurposes. It’s also because it’s just so rich with goods. Take, for example, the Sonorama series of audiocasts, curated by longtime Downtown music figure Elliott Sharp, whose dozens upon dozens of broadcasts thus far range from Max Neuhaus’s take on John Cage’s “Fontana Mix” to selections from Bernard Herrmann’s film scores, to work by Sharp himself. If you manage to navigate to it, the list of Sonorama entries at that PS1 site is in alphabetical order, but according to the site’s RSS feed, among the more recent Sonorama entries is Persepolis by Xenakis: a tape-music, sound-installation commission by the Shah of Iran in 1971 (MP3). Despite its origin and subject, the piece is neither classical nor celebratory; it’s a fairly harrowing cycle of found and manipulated sound. More info on the track and the cast series at ps1.el.net and at wps1.org.