Roberta Settels

Mega Tip!  Roberta Settels was an American composer and industrial designer. She studied composition at Juliard in New York, and during the 70-ties and 80-ties, composed electronic music in Stockholm at EMS, and in Paris at IRCAM, and studied with the composeres Pierre Boulez and Iannis Xenakis. Later she created her own studio. Isolation from 1985 is her only released recording. It was released on her private label 'Music in Crisis'. Although 'Isolation' was composed in 1985, most parts of it sound very fresh and contemporary. Very unique for it's time, the timbres and formal progression of the work bare little resemblance to the electroacoustic maximalism of the period.  Isolation! Meinhof In Memoriam, an electronic work on Red Army Faction co-founder Ulrike Meinhof, composed shortly after she was found dead in her cell in 1976. The record was originally meant to be released on the Caprice label, who backtracked over concerns about the album's militant leftist politics, which meant that Settels released it herself on her Music In Crisis label. She described her compositions as "music for spiritual survival" and also composed for TV, film, and radio.

The music in the album, all generated by pure analog means, contains elements of extreme minimalism and splicing-techniques derived from the tape-music tradition. Even though the work, making clever use of sine-waves and white noise, it is very minimal in it's expression, and very clearly communicates the emotional states of lonliness and isolation which are it's conceptual aim.