iRUPERT - play mixed program one
Avant garde, tech pop and electronic space music from 1978 to the present. Music to click by. Arthur Harrison performs and sings as well.

 
“I first heard Rupert Chappelle play his machines in 1977. I had met him in Kent, Ohio at the Blanket Hill tent city. Later that year I found myself in Washington DC and I found Rupert again. He was on his way to a gig, so I invited myself along as 'roadie'.

   Back then, his sequencers and synthesizers were quite large, a rat's nest of wires and patch cords, knobs and buttons towering over the performer.

   “It turned out that this particular gig was at the Prince Georges County Fair. The crowd grew in larger and larger there in the barn on the institutional bleachers, in anticipation and curiousity of this strange man in medieval chain mail who just carried in what looked like half of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

   “After a long set-up and tune-up, Rupert launched into his first piece. The crowd of hundreds became quiet. They stared. And within the time of one song, they stampeded out of the barn. That first song sounded awful, for sure, but it takes a while to tweak that many knobs, and the quality of the opening part of the show was strictly not guaranteed.

   “Those who did stay, of course, were treated to a marvelous demonstration of then state of the art electronic music.”

- gregor markowitz