Labelempreintes DIGITALesGenreElectronic
Arriving from the supplier (ships as soon as it reaches us)
Tracked express shipping from Italy, no customs or import VAT in the EU. Shipping costs
Histoires de Soldats pairs two electroacoustic works by John Young, both realized at De Montfort University in Leicester and both built around the recorded voice of a soldier remembering war. The spoken accounts lead; the electroacoustic sound is shaped around them, evoking the reimagined past and the inner workings of memory.
An Angel at Mons (2014), premiered in its original 15.1-channel format in Montréal, rests on the oral history of John Ewings, a soldier of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers who said he had seen an angel on the battlefield at Mons in August 1914. BBC Northern Ireland recorded him in 1980 at the age of 101. Young keeps the natural pace and timing of his storytelling, anticipates the vision with a prophecy Ewings remembered receiving as a boy from a “wee man”, a fairy, and closes on his remark that the angel “was a man”.
Once He Was a Gunner (2020), a 56-minute radio documentary in 26 linked sections, is based on an interview Young recorded in 2005 with his father, Alexander Young, a gunner in the 5th Field Regiment of the New Zealand Division from 1941 to 1945, at El Alamein, Monte Cassino and the Senio River. In the freezing Italian winters soldiers lodged with civilians, and in one such house in Central Italy he met the composer’s mother. The memories come out of order, from Bari to Trieste, as associations: lodging with families, lucky escapes, fear, comradeship, drink and the sense of loss on returning home. It was first broadcast on Radio New Zealand Concert in 2020.
Born in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1962, Young studied with John Cousins at the University of Canterbury and with Denis Smalley at East Anglia, and is Professor of Composition at De Montfort University.
CD-R edition in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 24187, 2024.
“This composition [Once He Was a Gunner] consisting of twenty-six short movements “is a journey through one man’s experience of the war in Italy — living with civilians, moments of lucky escape, the fear, the camaraderie, the panacea of alcohol, and the sense of loss on returning home.” We hear it all in this wonderful composition.”
“… I prefer the Angelic vision with its mysticism and magic.”
“Das in Montréal ansässige Elektroakustik — und Akusmatik — Label empreintes DIGITALes bringt in den nächsten Tagen zwei neue Alben des aus Neuseeland stammenden und heute in Großbritannien lebenden Komponisten John Young heraus.”
