Subtitled "Music for Native Peruvian Instruments and Magnetophonic Tape (1978)" this is a wonderful collection of pieces composed between 1976 & 1978 at the Royal College's EMS by Peruvian composer Arturo Ruiz del Pozo. Ranging from extended tape-loop meditations - the first track's cycling percussion & looming slown-down dread is a dead-ringer for Xenakis' "Bohor" - to more edit-heavy Musique Concrète pieces, this is an incredibly eye-opening survey of the work of a composer of whose work I was completely unfamiliar prior to this issue. The application of mystical folk instrumentation & enharmonic percussion sonorities just adds to the appeal.

"Compositional concrete music techniques as loops (repetitive tape fragments), variable speed (faster or slower playback of tape), superimposition (several channels recording), polyrhythm (simultaneous execution of fragments with different tempos), polytonality (simultaneous execution of fragments with different tonality looking for harmonization), aleatory mix (fusion of melodies, rhythms, textures, etc. produced randomly.) Microtonality (use of variable tuning microtones), tape echo ; coupled with creative techniques as free improvisation, classic and twelve-tone harmony, leitmotiv, dynamics, structure, etc.; were used with a coherent elaborated logic trying to create a unifying style of works that arose with spontaneous enthusiasm during the course of time.The expressive character of Native Compositions, while being own and unique in the development of each work, can be defined as relaxing because the set of works conveys a meditative state of consciousness that brings us to the longing for inner peace so important and necessary in our lives.By the encounter of the special sonority of Native Peruvian Instruments with academic techniques of musical composition at that time (management, development and process of sound elements physical and specifically recorded at tape), Native Compositions achieves a unique result in form, style, and artistic expression; driving us to a contemplative state of the amazement of existence.Bonus tracks : 'D' and 'Kanon expansivo'.Arturo Ruiz del Pozo, was born in Lima, Peru, in 1949, he studied with Miguel Donoso, Lily Rosay, Andres Sas, Edgar Valcárcel, Kenneth Jones and Lawrence Casserley. Studies in Lima: National School of Music. At the University of London: Royal College of Music. Academic Degree: Master of Music in Composition 1978." label press