A truly stunning and captivating tapestry of sonic artistry, Pentiments’ latest release, The Art of Speech (For Ana), by Arsenije Jovanović - woven from elements of musique concrète, field recording, and ethereal, fragmented instrumentation - is a strikingly rare and delicate beauty that is easily among the most important and exciting revelations of the year so far.

Three decades on from the fall of Communism in Europe, the worlds of avant-garde and experimental music still struggle to contend with the shadows cast by the Iron Curtain. Countless remarkable artists who worked behind its borders remain inexplicably shrouded in mystery or sinfully obscure. Many, despite the overwhelming challenges to free expression that they faced, were among the most forward-thinking, visionary, and accomplished artists of their time, contributing alternate trajectories and practices within the histories of each idiom’s formative years. The Serbian radio-art composer and film director, Arsenije Jovanović, is one such case. For more than half a century, he has developed a deeply personal and radical form of sound art for radio, now the subject of the Chicago based imprint Pentiments’ latest release, The Art of Speech (For Ana), which also marks the first appearance of the composer’s work on vinyl.

Arsenije Jovanović was born in Belgrade, Serbia in 1932, and began exploring experimental media during the 1960s. Initially working predominantly as a producer and director of theater and films for television, during the 1970s he began to expand his practice into the sonic realm, creating radio dramas that deployed sound as an experiential, narrative material, and laid the foundations for much of his work ever since.

It wasn’t until he had reached his 60s during the 1990s, that Jovanović’s work began to garner international attention, first via a small handful of CD releases produced in France and Austria, then within the soundtracks of numerous films - most notably those of Terrence Malick - before being met with wide acclaim with Galiola - Works For Radio, 1967 - 2000, co-released by FO A RM Projects, and/OAR, and Alluvial Recordings in 2008.

The Art of Speech (For Ana), delving forward from the ground covered by Works For Radio, 1967 - 2000, is arguably the most intimate album to be released by Jovanović to date. A truly startling and visionary accomplishment within the field of musique concrète, the work initially premiered as an eight-channel installation in Vienna for Tonspur’s Für Einen Öffentlichen Raum series in 2018, and is built from decades of recordings made of the composer’s daughter, Ana, ranging from her birth until her late teens, when she appears as a virtuosic speaker and musician.

Enveloping the 2 sides of the LP, The Art of Speech (For Ana) brings Jovanović’s remarkable sensitivity for the material and conceptual possibilities of sound into central focus, as he weaves voice, ethereal and fragmented instrumentation, ambiances captured by field recording, and the manipulation of his hand into a cohesive sense of place that remains cocooned within a collapsed, non-linear presentation of time.

If ever there was a place where the towering heights of art, technology, and a profound sense of humanity meet as a single force, The Art of Speech (For Ana) has to be it.