Huuuge Tip! * 400 copies in screen-printed sleeve, includes a 16-page booklet * For nearly four decades, since its founding during the mid 1980s, the Belgian imprint, Sub Rosa, has continuously plumbed the depths of numerous, radical creative histories, assembling a catalog of releases that has almost no equivalent within the contexts of experimental and avant-garde music. While they have issued releases by plenty of famous names over the years, the label truly excels through its rigorous explorations of lost and obscure artefacts, manifesting as astounding revelations that have regularly altered our perception of the narratives we have inherited. In typical fashion, the label’s last foray into music made collaboration with moving mage, the first ever release of Alain Pierre’s visionary soundtrack for Thierry Zeno’s 1974, controversial and widely banned avant-garde film “Vase de Noces” (Wedding Trough), is exactly this. Among the most obscure and inaccessible experimental soundtracks ever produced, it's a wondrous and mind-altering excursion into vocalisations, tape manipulations, and electronic process. Issued by Sub Rosa is a beautiful, limited vinyl edition of 400 copies, housed in a screen-printed sleeve and including a 16-page booklet, it’s as essential as they come for fans of experimental electronic music, soundtracks, and avant-garde cinema at large.

Very little is publicly known about the Belgian composer Alain Pierre, who sadly passed away earlier this year. Born in 1948 and an early adopter and enduring advocate of synthesis and electronic process, Pierre’s legacy has managed to remain relatively obscure, despite composing more than 500 film soundtracks over the course of his long career. It’s only recently, first with Stroom’s 2016 release of “Jan Zonder Vrees”, and then with Finders Keepers’ release of two of his soundtracks from the 1970s - “Ô Sidarta” and “Des Morts (Of The Dead)” - in 2020 and 2023, respectively, that its been possible to encounter his work outside of the idioms within which it was composed. Each has made it clear what forward-thinking visionary he was from the start, a truth made that much more evident by his soundtrack for Thierry Zeno’s 1974 film “Vase de Noces”.

While unquestionably infamous - having been banned for its man character’s concerning relationship with his pet pigs, and only occasionally screened over the decades since its release - “Vase de Noces” (sometimes known as “Wedding Trough” and “The Pig Fu**ing Movie”) - is among the most obscure gestures in the history of cinema. An avant-garde art exploitation horror film that centres around a single character manifesting unusual behaviour on a rural farm, it belongs to an era during which film attempted to push perception and social morays, in this case dealing openly and graphically with zoophilia, animal killings, and the consumption of faeces.

Shot slowly in a long period of time, it seems that Alain Pierre was engaged to compose the soundtrack for “Vase de Noces” fairly early in the film’s production. The composer would later explain: “As the shooting progressed, I suggested samples of sounds obtained from my machine. This was what he wanted: bottle sounds. There isn't a single direct sound in the film - it's all dubbed. I never distinguished music from the rest of the soundtrack. The idea of a 'sound object' never left me, and I've always kept that direction in mind when composing.”

Comprising 15 pieces, in both its discrete passages and as a totality, Pierre’s full soundtrack for “Vase de Noces” is a stunning and curious thing to behold, partially because it’s often difficult to discern the processes being used. Running like the spine through the soundtrack are a series of choral works presented in unaltered form which lend a very specific sense of mood. For a number of the other pieces - some of which are threaded by the unprocessed “bottled sounds” / field recordings mentioned above - Pierre embraced upon heavy tape manipulation, entirely obscuring the source material and transforming it into wild pulses and rhythmical tones, creating engrossingly experimental works that feel singular and unique, while also entirely linked to the broader continuum of electroacoustic practice to which they belong.

Often elegantly simple and direct, ranging from broodingly aggressive to playfully irreverent, “Vase de Noces” is a truly striking body of work long overdue as a stand alone release. Across its length, bubbling electronics and tape manipulation dance in a startling interplay to untreated acoustic sound sources, drawing a greater sense of meaning and effect from each. Easily one of the most unique and striking efforts of 1970s electroacoustic music we’ve encountered in recent years, both working within and against the standing historical narratives attending to the practice - feeling sophisticated and refined while retaining the immediacy and directness of DIY - Sub Rosa’s first ever release of Alain Pierre’s brilliant 1974 soundtrack illuminates and elevates a little known sonic radical to astounding heights that keep him in our consciousness for the foreseeable future. Issued as a beautiful, limited vinyl edition of 400 copies, housed in a screen-printed sleeve and including a 16-page booklet, it’s an absolute stunner that can’t be missed. Sub Rosa has done it again!