Originally issued in 1970 within the third suite of LPs comprising Deutsche Grammophon's Avant-Garde series, the French composer and electroacoustic pioneer Luc Ferrari's Presque Rien No.1 / Société II stands among the most important and groundbreaking albums issued within the canon of 20th Century avant-garde and experimental music. Containing two radically distinct works, Presque Rien No.1 (1967-1970) and Société II (1967), it doubles as a near perfect illumination of the incredible range of creative approach that defined Ferrari's life and work.
The influence - rippling all around us within the contemporary context of experimental music and beyond - of the album's first side, offered to Presque Rien No.1, can't be overstated. Begun during the summer of 1967 and completed over the coming years, it draws its sonic materiality from the composer's use of 'anecdotal sound': field recordings made in Croatia. Unlike any contemporary using similar recordings during this period, or even Ferrari's previous efforts with them, Presque Rien No.1 represents the groundbreaking gesture of utilizing them without intervention or manipulation, creating a sonic snapshot of time and place. As such, the piece may be the earliest composition to solely use field recordings in their pure state as a means for composing music, as well as laying crucial groundwork for the emerging field of sonic ecology.
Ferrari's second piece for his lone contribution to the Avant-Garde series, Société II couldn't be further in sonic materiality or conceptual approach from its companion. Composed in the political ferment that would eventually explode during May '68, the work embodies pointedly political overtones of a feminist nature, about which the composer stated: "This piece can be described as musical theatre insofar as the four soloists (piano and three percussionists) vie with each other in their interest in the piano's body. One could almost see in it, if one wished, though it's not certain, a caricature of a macho society." Composed for piano, 3 percussions, and 16 instruments, this astoundingly engrossing expanse of tense, tonal and timbral events makes clear nods to Ferrari's deep sympathies with the idiom of free jazz and remains one of the most remarkable compositions of his career.
