Considered by Jack Goldstein to be the cousin of a film, between 1976 and 1986 the artist made transparent, coloured and black vinyl discs. Each one refers to a single object, action or event, ranging from the felling of trees to a murder, a drowning or the sound of the wind. The sound comes from a library of sound effects.

«The colours came first, then the images,» explains Goldstein. «It's not the sounds that interest me, but the images. I wanted to make a film about the wind, for example, but I couldn't make it. As a recording (The Dying Wind), it works perfectly. I can hold the wind in my hand... It's physically present. I wanted to make a film about a man drowning, but that wasn't possible, so I made a vinyl instead. The record gives you the same experience. That's the direction my work is taking: to make you feel an extreme situation, but from a distance, so that you can control it. I don't think you need to live an experience in real time and in space to experience it. You can experience it in your head without having to experience it in your body.»

We will be presenting the first and most emblematic sound work produced by the artist in 1976, entitled A Suite of Nine 45 rpm 7-Inch Records with Sound Effects. The evocative titles of the nine vinyl records are associated with their sound content, and the sound is pressed onto vinyl records of different colours. The choice of colours provides additional information about the nature of the sound. The suite consists of the following items: A German Shepard, on red vinyl; A Swim Against the Tide, on blue vinyl; A Faster Run, on orange vinyl; The Tornado, on purple vinyl; Two Wrestling Cats, on yellow vinyl; Three Felled Trees, on green vinyl; The Lost Ocean Liner, on black vinyl; The Burning Forest, on red and white vinyl; The Dying Wind, on transparent vinyl.

The sounds engraved on Jack Goldstein's records are images that he wanted to transform into films. The physical presence and colour of each record are important. The sound recording of a tornado was recorded on purple vinyl because the artist had observed that purple was the colour of tornadoes when they were photographed. Matt Mullican recalls a visit he and Jack made to a Jannis Kounellis exhibition at the Sonnabend Gallery in 1974. The gallery's white cube had been painted bright yellow and a living black horse stood against the wall. Jack was struck by Kounellis's objectification of the horse, which echoed his own preoccupation with controlling animals and natural forces in pared-down, objectified images. As he had done in films such as 1976's Shane, in which a German shepherd, set against a featureless black background, barks repeatedly and on command.