Electronic / Acousmatic Music

Beautiful, floating-above-Earth photos from a Nasa space mission adorn this sharp looking digi-pak from Nepless, an Italian label bent on reissuing some of the most lovely of the long lost electro-acoustic pieces. Edgardo Canton was a member of the GRM from 1959 to 1965, and an independent composer who worked there until 1973. This CD collects three of his principal works from the 1960s and another from 1984. “Animal Animal” (1962) is comprised of very quiet and empty deep space floatation produ…

Four stereo works by Åke Parmerud from 1990 to 1995, led by Grains of Voices, a 31-minute piece built from voices he recorded while travelling around the world and premiered at the United Nations in 1997.

Seven fixed-medium works from 1998 to 2013 by Glasgow-based Alistair MacDonald, arranged as a cabinet of curiosities: Glasgow streets, Carrie Fertig's glass instruments, a tribute to Delia Derbyshire, building bricks and the jungle explored by Alfred Russel Wallace.

David Berezan’s Nautical Cycle, five multichannel acousmatic pieces from 2011 to 2017 built from sea buoys, unmanned light vessels, mooring chains in Visby harbour and the bass clarinet of Marij van Gorkom, including the Klang ! first prize winner Lightvessels.

Three fixed-media works by eRikm from 2013 to 2016: an Icelandic crossing built around a folk tale, New Year’s Eve fireworks on a Berlin street, and a fire-retardant scar on the hills above Marseille, with a text by psychiatrist Georges Yoram Federmann.

Two long works by Monique Jean: T.A.G. (2013), mostly synthesized sound shaped by crowds of demonstrators, and Out of Joint (2009-11), a hybrid of Shakespeare's Macbeth and the films, stagings and rewrites it inspired, mastered by Christian Bouchard.

Six acousmatic works by Adam Stanović from 2015 to 2017, made mostly in Sheffield: a remix that lost its source, a parody of the metal-sound cliché, traffic around an old steel furnace, and a birthday homage to Beatriz Ferreyra.

Om Kult 1 - the first set of 31 tracks of the Om Kult 3CD triptych, recorded and processed at Om Kult Osaka between 2016 and 2018.  Evolving from his extended “Brainnectar” studies on psycho-spiritual cleansing rituals derived from various shamanic and yogatantric traditions - and his examinations of aural hallucinations and paranormal perceptions - Rudolf Eb.er focuses now on the occult knowledge and techniques for the transition from life to death, on the ejecting mind as well as on the …

This is the last of the 199.x titles, a great diversion into those that were endlessly divisive amongst the C.P. cabal; so much so that common ground had to be carved out & explored... I'd heard legend of this internal-issue-only "White Label" GRM compilation, from trusted source "Ravi" Ben, of La Dame Blanche fame, but had never heard nor seen a copy until one literally landed in my lap at a soirée recently. Largely consisting of alternative & revised versions of prime 1973-era GRM pieces…

Lionel Marchetti (1967) is a notable French electroacoustic improviser and musique concrète composer, visual-sound artist, a writer and a poet. Self-taught at first, he later studied musique concrète with Xavier Garcia. Lionel Marchetti is a pioneer improviser, using various electronic instruments, analog systems with modified speakers, REVOX reel-to-reel recorder etc. He has collaborated with musicians like Jérôme Noetinger, Xavier Garcia, Xavier Charles, Seijiro Murayama, Emmanuel Holterbach, …

Christian Zanési on Grand Bruit (1991): "The great mobile sound bodies have an ordinary yet amazing ability to place the listener-traveler within, as if he or she was inside a giant double bass, in this case a train stroked by a double bow: the rails and the air. In 1991, I explored this phenomenon during my daily commute from the studio to my home. I used only a 21 minutes recording and treated it as a single sound object. I then processed and enhanced it as a photographer would have don…

Five electroacoustic works by Horacio Vaggione, from newest to oldest: GRM, ZKM and Bourges commissions built on transformed piano and violin sounds, back to Fractal C, made in 1983-84 at Ircam on a VAX 780 from a fractal Cantor set model.

Annette Vande Gorne’s spatialized electroacoustic opera on a libretto by the poet Werner Lambersy, realized 2006-12: a condor against a bull in an Andean village, told through studio-recorded and transformed voices in 7.1 channels. Blu-ray audio.

Paul Dolden’s maximalist take on ancient myths and tuning systems, 2012 to 2016: the five-movement Music of Another Present Era plus two pieces for soloist and tape with guitarist Maurizio Grandinetti and trumpeter Łukasz Gothszalk.

Four multichannel works by Åke Parmerud from 2005 to 2011, commissioned by the GRM, IMEB and ZKM: a blind person’s dreams, the crystal glasses of his parents’ parties, four voices from around the world, and a catacomb of decaying masterpieces.

2014 Repress. Third release on the newly minted eMego offshoot Recollection GRM,  two pieces realized by Bernard Parmegiani in 1970. The former is full of negative space and low, coiling drones. For listeners whose only exposure to GRM came in the form of the first two installments in the Recollection GRM catalog, this material will come across as much less frenetic and more cinematic, particularly the beautiful, cosmic landscapes that make up the middle portion of the A-side. "Dedans-Deho…

Ten tape and electronic pieces by Jon Appleton spanning 1966 to 1996, from Columbia-Princeton and Moog III studies to the airport interviews of Newark Airport Rock and its 1996 sequel, and the Andrews Sisters collage Chef d’œuvre.

Restocked. Argentine electroacoustic composer Beatriz Ferreyra describes each of the pieces included on GRM Works: Demeures aquatiques (1967): "This electroacoustic piece, articulated into two clearly distinct parts, draws its sound source from the classical and unorthodox instruments -- metal sheets, glass rods, etc. -- invented by the Baschet brothers. I wanted to show the contrast between the rhythmic repetition of a sounding object, which gives out a feeling of fixity, an electroacoustic…

Another indispensable glimpse into the GRM archive courtesy of the mighty Editions Mego, 2014 repress. Beatriz Ferreyra's "L' Orvietan" (1970) is a work composed of two separate movements, the first drawing from electronic sounds, the second from concrète ones. These two sources do not meet, but tend equally towards sound antagonism and a complementarity of spirit. Philippe Carson Turmac's (1961) was created from machine-sounds from the Stuyvesant factories (Holland). Three movements foll…

Five works by Åke Parmerud from 2004 to 2015 that push acousmatic music towards techno, noise and metal: machine sounds, a vinyl crackle piece for the ZKM Klangdom, New Zealand birds, and a choir of four metal growlers.

Recollection GRM, a label within the Editions Mego family of labels, offers a third selection from the vast archives of Groupe De Recherches Musicales (GRM). The main idea behind the Traces series is to excavate short, forgotten or ignored pieces of music from the GRM Archives. This third volume, gathering pieces from before 1980, features the works of four composers from very different geographical and musical backgrounds. In addition to echoing the extraordinary vitality of musical experim…

2014 repress, Recollections GRM presents four "forgotten" and compelling electro-acoustic pieces from the institute's world famous archive. Recollection GRM, a label within the Editions Mego family of labels, offers a second selection from the vast archives of Groupe De Recherches Musicales (GRM). "The idea of the Traces series is to unearth from the GRM Archives short, forgotten, or ignored pieces of music. This second volume, which gathers works prior to 1976, features the 'early' works of f…

Francois Bayle's 'L'Experience Acoustique', Realised between 1966-1972 using the best technology available at the time, this 2 hour opus, powerful and immense in its scope, which explores a universe of electronic sounds and sound relationships. It's an investigation of acoustic sound at its purest levels and borders on psychedelic in effect. Chopping material from the world around him, manipulating it and juxtaposing against other, unlikely sources with illusive sleight-of-hand and haptic te…

Michel Chion’s second empreintes DIGITALes album pairs two musique concrète works eighteen years apart: Le prisonnier du son (1972), his first melodrama, and the Vingt-quatre préludes à la vie (1989-90), which answer it.

Another remarkable reissue from the hallowed GRM (Groupe de Recherche Musciales) archive in Paris - home to some of the world's most fascinating, advanced electronic music research. The 2nd GRM Recollection was realised in 1974 and 1976 by Guy Reibel (1936, Strasbourg, France), the first assistant to Pierre Schaeffer during his electroacoustic composition courses at the Conservatoire de Paris and a member of GRM from 1963 to 1983. Housed in sleeve designed by Stephen O'Malley,. Cut to vin…

Eight acousmatic works by the Belgian composer Ingrid Drese from 1996 to 2008, nearly 110 minutes in all, including the Ina-GRM commission Sept œils sauvages with texts by Marc Jaffeux and the octophonic Horloge à feu. DVD-Audio.

Within the four-tenth-hasty Suite February von Luigi Archetti the individual musical-acoustic events seem to have out-pulled in individual sound-pure from the being silent background. Looking for, a "Hinhoeren" and emphasizing hidden, electrifying sound particle. The attempt is to be given to the shade of the music a voice. Klangliche atmospheres through-cross feeling and conception. Fourteen ephemeren sound places, arranges for the listener a music, which reciprocates between imagination, expec…

Eight works by Monty Adkins from 1994 to 2005, 93 minutes at 96 kHz, from a train journey after Turner and a Hubble-inspired piece made of rocks and gas cylinders to drum 'n' bass, William Gibson and a flute piece for Alejandro Escuer. DVD-Audio.

Six acousmatic works by Julien Guillamat from 2010 to 2026, from Birmingham pieces built on the dismantling of the BEAST loudspeaker system to recent soundscapes of the Aure Valley in the Hautes-Pyrénées, recorded in its ski resorts and mountain villages. CD-R.

Roxanne Turcotte’s “sonic archeology”: electroacoustic works mixing everyday objects, field recordings from Tokyo, the Seychelles and New Zealand, and sounds of Jean-François Laporte’s invented instruments, dedicated to her late colleagues and mentors. CD-R.

Four works by Monique Jean from 2015 to 2024, three built on MissTake, her no-input four-track tape recorder with effects pedals, including Volt_#1 and Volt_#3, plus Tumultes, inspired by novels by Adania Shibli and Antoine Wauters. CD-R.

Debut solo album by Montréal sound artist Diego Bermudez Chamberland: a 44-minute acousmatic work in three movements (2020-23, revised 2025) freely inspired by the Norse cosmos of Snorri Sturluson’s Edda, moving from the scale of Yggdrasil to the microscopic. CD-R.

Armando Balice’s triptych of inner gardens from 2018 to 2021, three acousmatic pieces in eight movements each built from ravens, forest recordings, analogue synthesizers and the cello of Lola Malique, starting with an Ina-GRM commission inspired by Japanese gardens. CD-R.

Three multichannel works by Stéphane Roy from 2022 to 2024: a war piece after poems by Paul-Marie Lapointe, a sound bestiary for Jean-François Laporte’s Babel table, and nine acousmatic miniatures on experiential time. CD-R.

Seven multichannel works by Åke Parmerud from 2019 to 2025 that push guitar, piano, percussion and string quartet into music no player could perform, from the alien metal band of Heavy Metal to a Latin groove for Javier Álvarez.

Annette Vande Gorne’s complete Vox Alia cycle (1992-2024), five multichannel works on the voice without words, from Maria Callas and Pierre Schaeffer in Affetti to sacred chant, a Werner Lambersy poem, crowds and animal calls. CD-R.

Adrian Moore’s works from 2019 to 2024: five wt_ pieces each built from one source (a ceramic pot, a bird whistle, a wine glass, metal sheets, voices) with the same Pure Data toolkit, plus two Sheffield-area site pieces on industrial noise and change. CD-R.

Five stereo acousmatic works by Manuella Blackburn from 2018 to 2023, made from household sounds, plastic waste and microplastics, a rotary landline and the factory samples and fan noise of a Fairlight CMI. CD-R.

Eleven fixed-media works by Elsa Justel from 1995 to 2021, several of them homages built from the sounds of Ferrari, Parmegiani, Bayle, Dhomont, Ferreyra and Vande Gorne, alongside a COVID divertimento and a dialogue with pianist Ana Foutel. CD-R.