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The final album released by the composer-performer Jerry Hunt before his death, Ground: Five Mechanic

Convention Streams is a rare and foundational audio document of Hunt's compositional process. The record

collects five pieces from the artist's "Ground" series, translating his characteristically variable and spatial

scores into "recorded fixtures of activity using mechanic musical instrument arrays," to eerie and mesmerizing

results. Originally released by experimental label OODiscs in 1992, it is now available on vinyl for the first

time from Blank Forms Editions. It's tracks are dense and unpredictable, a miscellany of arrhythmic bursts,

fragments of spoken and whispered words, soft then fevered rattles and shaking, and a rare return to

pianoforte for the virtuoso player. On "Talk (slice): double" a nervous, warped dialogue unfolds between

Hunt and composer Rod Stasick, their voices alternately measured and monstrous. In "Transform (stream):

monopole," breathy whistles build against a shimmering stream of bells, rattles, and shakers in a fantastical

cascade of percussion. Hunt revisits the piano in "Lattice (stream): ordinal" and "Bitom (stream): link,"

oscillating between gentle, almost classical phrases and frantic, seemingly random play. His collaboration with

violinist Jane Henry, "Chimanazzi (Olun): core," extends similarly unorthodox playing techniques to the

violin, involving the scraping, plucking, and playing of it's strings. The unstable quality of these tracks belies

the rigor of Hunt's procedures; each ofGround's five pieces, their "common ground core," is derived from the

angelic tables of sixteenth century English philosopher and occultist John Dee, adapted by Hunt as

frameworks to layer, adapt, and renew in his compositions. With a complex arrangement of sensors and

equipment, which the artist called "interrelated electronic, mechanic, and social sound-sight interactive

transactional systems," Hunt realized these derivative systems in the techno-shamanic performances for which

he is best known. Ground distills these procedures into fixed songs, producing a vital and critical record of

Hunt's singular approach to composition.