Private Parts - The Record

We Say...

Review by David Stubbs

Born in 1930, and member of the Sonic Arts union alongside the likes of Alvin Lucier and David Behrman, Robert Ashley has probably done more than any other composer to expand and redefine the lexicon of contemporary opera. Indeed, with his use of electronics, spoken word narratives and, on works such as Perfect Lives, explorations of Americana, he can truly be said to have conceived such a thing as “American opera,” one which has reached a wide audience not just through the concert halls but also television.

The two pieces that make up this album, recorded in 1977, would go on to top and tail Perfect Lives. However, it isn't just Ashley completists who should own this album, which features very different versions of “The Park” and “The Backyard.” Accompanied by a distantly drifting, undulating soundtrack of tablas, steely sheet waves of synthesizer and the eloquent tinkling of “Blue” Gene Tyranny on piano and electric keyboard, it is Ashley himself who provides the narratives, a series of apparently disconnected musings and reflections. There is a velvet, seductive quality to Ashley's gentle, rising intonations, conveying the intimacy of interior monologues, of a deeper consciousness of self, immured in the skull.

“This is a record...,” Ashley intones on “The Park.” “I am sitting on a park bench next to myself... inside of me the words form... come down out of the tree and fight like a man... this is not a record... this is a story.” Oscillating between first and third person, “The Backyard” fixes on a woman staring out from a doorway, static and apparently serene, finding assurance and certainty in a series of mathematical equations, before ending on a note of jolting uncertainty; “What's going on? I'm not the same person as I used to be.” Private Parts is by turns soothing and disquieting, confounding in its narrative non-sequiturs and yet, somehow, cumulatively illuminating about the nature and workings of the human mind. It is always, and again and again, profoundly listenable.