- A Third Version of the Future Travel is Out
In 1981 the short-lived Street Records label released the Future Travel of David Rosenboom. The unique recording was made almost entirely with a rare instrument designed by Donald Buchla in collaboration with Rosenboom in 1979 – Buchla Touché, a digital-analog keyboard instrument. The distinct sound of Touché creates an impression as if the album tracks were recorded in our days. Other than being featured in the Daytime Viewing (1983) and in the recent release by the current owner of the Touche, Richard Smith (under the moniker Shasta Cults), the instrument barely may be heard on any other recording. In addition to Buchla Touché and violin, the album tracks were composed with the Buchla 300 Electronic Music System, piano, percussion, and electronically processed speech.
On June 21, 2024, Black Truffle Records re-released Future Travel, which signals the relevance of the composer’s pondering into the movement(s) of human culture and the evolution of consciousness. The recording includes 7 compositions already familiar to listeners: “Station Oaxaca,” “Nazca Liftoff,” “Corona Dance,” “Time Arroyo,” “Desert Night Touch Down,” “Palazzo” and “Nova Wind.” In a new re-issue of Future Travel, a listener will find two additional previously unheard tracks, “Future Travel Patterns” and “Future Travel M.U.S.I.C.”, discovered during the assemblage of composers’ archive in 2022. Following the 2007 issue of a CD by New World Records, the third release offers more additional material, such as liner notes written by the composer packed in a booklet featuring a number of archival images.
- Futurist Thinking: Genesis of Composer’s Ideas
Rosenboom’s ideas about the universe and the future of human civilization may be traced back to the late 1960s. Like many creatives of that time, the composer was inspired to think on a planetary scale after the publication of the NASA images of Earth in 1968. Soon after that, in July of 1969, during the New Sounds in Music concert series in Urbana-Champaign, Rosenboom took part in the “Moon Landing” concert. While he was performing, the video of the US astronauts making their first steps on the Moon’s surface was displayed on the screen. The same year, a 22-year-old enthusiast got in touch with NASA to become the first resident composer on the moon. (Rosenboom, 1970, p. 58) In his notebook, around 1972 Rosenboom left a series of notes later used for the lyrics featured in the Future Travel:
“Lesson: Laughter keeps one from dying from an overdose of insights.”
“Materiality is a super consequence of organization. ”
“The universe becomes conscious in the individual, (not the reverse).” (Rosenboom, 1972, p. 21)
In 1977, during his sabbatical, Rosenboom had been staying in Berkley, at Buchla’s house. There he was composing and helping with designs for the Buchla 300 system. This temporary relocation from Toronto to the Bay Area encouraged the composer to resume pondering extraterrestrial life and the future of humanity. During the same year, he was invited by Richard Lowenberg to participate in a NASA-sponsored Satellite Arts Project (series) led by pioneers of telecommunication art, Sherrie Rabinowitz and Kit Galloway.
Sometime in 1978, Rosenboom started working on a compositional series called In the Beginning (1978-1981). This opus magnum stands in direct connection with Future Travel. The last composition, “In the Beginning V (The Story)” commissioned by the Arch Ensemble, became a point of origin of the pattern used in Future Travel. The first of the six-movement piece starts with the same motif as in the composition “Nova Wind” from Future Travel.
Buchla Touché, 1980. Photographer: David Rosenboom.
The verbal section of the “Station Oaxaca” and “Desert Night Touch Down,” performed by Jacqueline Humbert, comes from The Story written for the piece. The same narrative served as a scenario for the unreleased film that George Manupelli shot in 1980 at Point Reyes in the Bay Area. More about the film may be found in the article published on the Ann Arbor Film Festival website.
The LP published by the Detroit-based Street Records was produced in the Zoetrope studio of F.F. Coppola, in San Francisco. With the effort of Jose Cruz, owner of the Street Records, in 1980 Rosenboom got access to the studio for a week. All audio tracks were recorded within this short period, with the help of recording engineer Kathy Morton.
- The Sonic Journey Converging Science and Mysticism
The recording offers an original cosmological statement making this album relevant 40 years after its original release. In the dialogue used for Future Travel, Rosenboom presents his vision of human evolution as the development of consciousness towards the point of producing a high-level societal organization. The Story unfolds a narrative about human beings striving to double themselves, particularly through religion and technology. It is then traversed in a description of the emergence and evolution of global consciousness as awakening through continuous perceptual differentiation. The latter becomes embodied in new concepts and beliefs. In a dialogue from The Story, we hear three voices. These are: a “synthetic” voice of the Double, a two-spirit character, and voices of the two spirits, or expressions of the Double: “The spirit beings are space, itself, charged with the activity of thought.” (Rosenboom, 1982b, p. 3)
Conceived as an electronic orchestra world “built” with the Buchla Touché, the musical narrative of tunes and chord changes embarks a listener on a sonic journey. The opening motif of Future Travel brings back the optimism regarding the expansion of the global consciousness, its growth, and its perpetuation on Earth.
David Rosenboom performing at the M.U.S.I.C. Festival, The Broadway Theater, San Francisco, 1982. Photographer unknown.
The piece called “Station Oaxaca” draws a picture of our place and existence in the universe from the perspective of the Mayan culture. The next, more compositionally complex “Time Arroyo” imitates the swirling flood of time – the generative moment of the new physical properties emerging. The uplifting “Corona Dance,” referring to the corona of the Sun, presents us with the fruits of the “creation.” The central composition called “Nazca Liftoff” brings back the Native American cultures’ view of the world. The title clearly refers to the mystic landscape patterns observed in some areas of the continent. For Rosenboom, this cultural phenomenon embodies an effort of human consciousness to interact with the global one. For the composer, these patterns are messages depicting the individual and communal identity of ancient people.
The fifth composition “Desert Night Touch Down” creates a view of the soft landing of consciousness on Earth, just before its expansion. The next composition “Palazzo” serves as an interlude, metaphorically bringing us to a gathering place, the place of abundance. The series of compositions concludes with the “Nova Wind” – summing up previously manifested cues and images. The word “Nova” refers to the birth of a Supernova, and the word “wind” to the wave of energy it produces. Serving as a source of new atoms, physical as well as chemical properties, as imagined by Rosenboom, nova wind replenishes the universe with resources giving an impulse for instantaneous generation processes.
It’s fair to state, that recording explores different ways of looking at the universe – a scientific (modern) viewpoint and a pre-scientific (ancient) one. Starting with the mythological concepts of Maya, Rosenboom develops them through a series of shifts converting them to science-based cosmological hypotheses. Through Eastern thought and Tibetian mysticism composer connects the two seemingly opposite ontological viewpoints.
- Final Thought for Thinking the Future
Re-released by the Black Truffle Records in 2024, Future Travel speaks to the present as a secular cosmological statement addressing our role, as species, in the universe. Encouraging a listener to pause and reflect on the speed, direction, and purpose of our movement as a civilization, the composer presents imagery of the vast universe and the humble place of humans in it. At the same time, he asserts the unrestrained capacity of a single individual to impact the evolution of human culture. Using sound as a medium for communicating his message, Rosenboom invites us to think of large developmental processes unfolding on our planet and beyond it. Through art, a tool of symbolic representation, the composer delivers his concept of the large-scale interstellar processes in a way that is cognitively approachable and inspiring.
. . .landing on the spaceship Earth – are we ready for a purposeful movement to the future? Exposure to Rosenboon’s Future Travel will surely provide a listener a food for thought.
Shooting of “In the Beginning” film, 1980. Photographer: A. Shreiber.
References:
- Rosenboom, D. (1972) Notebook with compositional sketches, lyrics, and philosophical musings. Personal archive of David Rosenboom. Valencia, CA.
- Rosenboom, D. (1970) In support of a systems theoretical approach to art media. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Conference of the American Society of University Composers, Inc., p. 56-68.
- Rosenboom, D. (1982a) Future Travel. Street Records, SRA–002, Birmingham, MI.
- Rosenboom, D. (1982b) In the Beginning V (The Story). Rampike, Vol. 2, Nos. 1 & 2, Toronto.