Pierre Schaeffer

condition (records/covers): NM / NM Gategold sleeves.  Pierre Schaeffer's Dix Ans D'Essais Radiophoniques Du Studio Au Club D'Essai sprawls across twelve LP sides, a monument on the RTF (Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française) label to French radio's experimental decade from 1942 to 1952. Six double albums documenting broadcasts that transformed what sound could mean: this is archaeology on an industrial scale, excavation of an entire culture preserved in shellac and vinyl.

The Club d'Essai functioned as laboratory, playground, and salon simultaneously. Schaeffer gathered poets, musicians, technicians, actors, anyone willing to treat radio as art form rather than mere delivery system. Jean Tardieu contributed radiophonic poetry; Pierre Henry emerged from these sessions as Schaeffer's most important compositional partner. The broadcasts mixed drama, documentary, pure sound experiment, and forms that had no name because no one had tried them before.

What strikes the contemporary listener is the ambition. These weren't marginal experiments tucked into late-night slots; they were sustained investigations into what the medium could become, supported by state broadcasting infrastructure that saw cultural prestige as part of its mission. The RTF gave Schaeffer studios, engineers, transmission time, everything needed to fail productively for a decade until the failures turned into musique concrète.

The five-double-LP format announces archival seriousness. This isn't a highlights compilation but an attempt at comprehensive documentation, the kind of editorial project that only institutional backing makes possible. For researchers, the set constitutes primary source material; for listeners, it offers immersion in a moment when radio still seemed capable of revolution. Holding these twelve sides means holding the Big Bang of electroacoustic music, the moment before the universe it created had fully expanded.