condition (record/cover): NM / NM Insert included. Iannis Xenakis enters this survey like a force of nature, which is fitting since nature's forces (Brownian motion, gas molecules, stellar distributions) provided his compositional raw material. The Candide LP pairing Terretektorh and Nomos Gamma documents two of his most radical spatial experiments, works that scattered orchestras across concert halls and audiences alike.

Terretektorh (1965-66) places eighty-eight musicians among the listeners, surrounding them with sound that moves, migrates, attacks from unexpected angles. Xenakis drew on his training as an architect (he worked with Le Corbusier on the Philips Pavilion) and his experience as a wartime resistance fighter; the music carries both the precision of structural engineering and the chaos of combat. When the brass erupt, you understand that this man knew what explosions actually sounded like.

Nomos Gamma pushes further, ninety-eight musicians dispersed according to mathematical distributions derived from probability theory. The listener becomes a point in acoustic space, bombarded by events whose local unpredictability serves a larger statistical order. Stockhausen was pursuing similar spatial ideas, but Xenakis's approach was rawer, more physical, less mystical. This is music that treats the body as a target.