Electronic Revolution CD (1998)

France: Crash Magazine (CD, 1st, "CR 01"), 1998.
5" x 5.5" x 0.375", 96 tracks, 62' 34" total length. Cover drawing by Brion Gysin. 

Cut-Up audio from 23 reel-to-reel tapes of Burroughs, c.1968 Duke St., London (the back says recorded by Brion Gysin in 1963, which is not accurate).  Not directly tied to the book entitled Electronic Revolution, but a good companion.

This was initially planned as 500 copies to be released with the first issue of Crash magazine, but fewer than 100 copies were actually released (apparently due to late issues with the estate and the magazine). Liner notes by Ramuntcho Matta (in English) and Frank Perrin (in French), with some text (in Englsh) on back cover by Samon Takahashi, who mastered the recording.  Some of the tracks on this CD went into the roughly 40 minutes of the 2016 LP Curse Go Back, but otherwise is hard-to-find material.

From the Ramuntcho Matta liner notes: “Six months before his departure Brion Gysin gave me 23 reel to reel tapes saying that these were important tapes and that he would not want vultures to make them disappear. Last Summer when William S. Burroughs left this world I decided to listen to the tape, and the first that I took: William was on it.”

According to Jim Pennington (Aloes Books), in much of the material, Burroughs is reading from a Scientology Auditing Instruction Guide.

According to Clive Graham, who worked on the Cure Go Back LP, approximately 15 minutes of material from this CD was cut to produce Curse Go Back. In his words: "I would have liked to do a straight reissue on CD, but the estate preferred an edited version. All the removed material is repetition of near identical content to that used on the record. The CD is more hypnotic and meditational with umpteen repetitions of 'the masses', etc. No non CD material was added."

Received as a gift from Janet Galore in 2023.