condition (record/cover): NM / NM -  Mutations on INA-GRM finds Jean-Claude Risset at the institutional heart of French electroacoustic music, the research group that Pierre Schaeffer founded now providing home for computer-based work Schaeffer himself regarded with suspicion. The title announces transformation, the fundamental subject of all electronic music: sound becoming other than itself.

Risset had conducted pioneering research at Bell Labs in New Jersey, developing algorithms for digital synthesis that would shape electronic music for decades. His analysis of trumpet tones revealed how timbre evolves over a note's duration, knowledge that permitted unprecedented realism in computer-generated sound. But Mutations isn't about imitation; it's about possibilities that acoustic instruments cannot access, timbral morphings that only digital processing permits.

The GRM's release acknowledges that the future Schaeffer resisted had arrived, that the institution must evolve or ossify. Risset navigated these politics gracefully, never attacking the concrete tradition but simply demonstrating alternatives. Where tape-based musique concrète cut and spliced, computer synthesis permitted continuous transformation, spectra bending in ways that analog technology couldn't achieve. The AM catalog number places this alongside the GRM's other releases, institutional imprimatur for work that challenged institutional assumptions while honoring institutional history.