* 3LP with booklet * The visionary Metaphon label unveils a profound journey into the sonic cosmology of Octavian Nemescu (1940-2020) with this essential 3LP anthology Passages / À Travers Le Temps. Spanning 1968 to 2015, this collection reveals Romania's mystical composer as a singular voice who transformed music into sacred ritual, standing apart from any system to listen instead to the "inner sound" before it becomes melody. Nemescu's "meta music" emerges as a spiritual practice where the buzz of bees, synthesizer drones and the ancient ison (drone) open portals to timeless awareness - what he described as composing "from the top of the mountain" where sound meets silence in perfect equilibrium.

These eight selected works, carefully mastered by Erica Nemescu from original tapes, trace the composer's lifelong quest to manifest the inaudible. The early tape experiments (1968's Cogito/Tempus and 1975's Natura renovatur) dissolve folkloric memory into electroacoustic innovation, while spectral masterworks like Passages (1981) construct shimmering architectures of "resonant time" through string harmonics and bell-like percussion. The titular À Travers Le Temps (1983) spatializes instrumental groups across multiple temporal dimensions, achieving what musicologist Tim Hodgkinson calls "chronomorphology - the shaping of musical time as plastic material." Later pieces like 2015's Mantra for a Sacred Space distill Nemescu's vision to its essence, where a single sustained tone becomes a vessel for meditation.

Presented for the first time on vinyl in this deluxe 180g 3LP boxset, the anthology includes bilingual liner notes with Nemescu's philosophical writings and rare archival photographs documenting his creative process. These works - previously scattered across obscure Romanian CD releases - now form a cohesive spiritual testament to his belief that "music serves no cultural purpose, only a ritual one." Metaphon's definitive edition reveals how Nemescu anticipated contemporary ambient and drone music while remaining rooted in his unique synthesis of Byzantine tradition, spectral innovation and cosmic consciousness.