Five Fertile Exchanges
**Limited and numbered to 150 copies** Little known outside of his native Australia, Peter Blamey has been recuperating discarded electronics into artworks for more than a decade. As Douglas Kahn writes in his sleeve notes here, he belongs to an artistic tradition unique to Australia that trades sound and energy. Having cut his teeth in an extensive exploration of disposed motherboards, Blamey has more recently worked with photo-voltaic cells, homemade electromagnets and rudimentary turbin…
Instantanes
Montreal stalwart Roger Tellier Craig (of Le Révélateur and Fly Pan Am) returns to Root Strata under his given name to offer a stunningly abstract pair of compositions indicating a severe departure from his earlier work. While Instantanés might at first evoke acousmatic and musique concrète traditions, the two side-long snapshots Roger presents feel far more spontaneous and rustic than those trappings might suggest, or as Luc Ferrari would say "a concrète music of the poor." A studied medi…
Ändere Die Welt, Sie Braucht Es
It’s raining “Musikalische Jugend Österreichs” titles! This collection of agit-prop tape music & raw tone-combination studies by the Austrian composer Wilhelm Zobl was recorded (with Eugeniusz Rudnik’s invaluable aid) at Studio Eksperymentalne & Vienna’s Institut Für Elektroakustik der Musikhoschule Wien in 1973 & 1971 (respectively) & remains (other than an appearance on a super-weird 1985 collection entitled “Antithesis” - where he appears alongside “Works of Electronic Music” alum Thanos Mikr…
Pandémonium
Herein lies the entire recorded output - save for an appearance on the 1983 Broken Flag “Crusade” compilation tape - of French Musique Concrète composer Jean-Baptiste Barriere, issued as a pair of LPs on Atem magazine’s short-lived record label - where they sat, somewhat uncomfortably, alongside canonic RIO sides by Univers Zero, Art Zoyd, This Heat, Aqsak Maboul, Present, and Fall of Saigon.Composed from 1975-1976, then issued as two separate LPs in 1979, the “Pandemonium” suite encompas…
Homo Faber, Dum Spiro Spero
Creel Pone treatment of this majorly slept-on set of dark, minimal, surrealist electro-acoustic & Musique Concrète pieces from the Polish composer Joanna Bruzdowicz, a member of the GRM under Pierre Schaeffer’s tutelage between 1968 & 1970 & long-term collaborator of Agnes Varda’s, for whom she scored several films from the mid-80’s on, including “Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse.” The LP in question (the only one to feature her electronic work) consists of the three-part “Homo Faber” suite - compose…
Meta
Fascinating collection of Minimal Sound-Art / Musique Concrète works by the obscure Belgian artist Paul A.R. Timmermans, privately issued in 1983 - with the aid & additional insight of his neighbor & friend Badouin Oosterlynck - in a perfectly minimal edition: a lead slug embedded with the artist's name is clamped onto the top left of an otherwise blank LP sleeve, with only a text-insert in four languages either affixed or inside. Containing four pieces composed between 1980 & 1982 of a very pec…
Cordes-Ci, Cordes-Ça, La Discordatura
1972 split release on Pathé Marconi EMI by the GMEB - Groupe de musique expérimentale de Bourges - founders & wife-and-husband team of Françoise Barrière & Christian Clozier. This is the first issue of Barrière's work & only the second of Clozier's after the Perspectives Musicales "Lettre À Une Demoiselle / Dichotomie / Petite Suite / D'Une Multitude En Fête" split w/ Jacques Lejeune (Creel Pone #073). Barrière's three-part "Cordes-Ci, Cordes-Ça" coats the A-side, electronically warping her Harp…
Abattage
Recorded in 1981 & issued “privately” in 1983 (on Jean Marc Foussat’s own Pyjama imprint) this is a screamer of a record, taking in a decidedly unique approach to minimal musique concrète assemblage (there’s an emphasis on presenting banal, interstitial in-situ sound-events [coughs, footsteps] that reminds of Luc Ferrari one minute ... before a sudden barrage of jackhammer-noise, plunderphonic mangling [is that ... Barbra Streisand !?!], and high-end oscillator scree takes over pushing this clos…
The Pulses of Time
Creel Pone of a 1981 LP privately released by the University of East Anglia containing three sparse Musique Concrète pieces composed between 1974 and 1979 at the GRM and UEA studios by New Zealand born/bred composer Denis Smalley. Widely considered to be one the classics of early British electro-acoustic music - alongside Trevor Wishart’s “Journey Into Space” & “Red Bird”, Desmond Leslie’s “Music of the Future”, and Basil Kirchin’s “Worlds Within Worlds”), the three pieces on “Pulses” each wor…
Suomalaista Elektroakustista Musiikkia
Reproduction of this superb 1978 pressing, realized at the Finnivox-studio & issued on their in-house Fennica Nova imprint, covering early- to late-70s work by a coterie of composers working largely in & around various public & private studios in Helsinki, including Yleisradion Kokeilustudio (Finnish Radio's Experimental Studio), Helsingin Yliopiston Musiikkitieteen Laitoksen Studio (The Electronic Music Studio at Helsinki University Music Department), Osmo Lindeman Kotistudio (Osmo Lindeman's p…
Electronic Music in Canada, vol.1 & 2
Epic, double-disc edition covering three LPs of formative Electronic Music from Canada; both volumes of the Melbourne-label "Electronic Music By Canadian Composers" series - presenting both cover-variations of each in a metallized variant of the de facto Creel Pone "grid" - then the internal Radio Canada pressing of "Music Canada Vol XIII Electronic Music in Canada." Starting with an amazing, side-length piece by "Sky-Sails" co-author Ann Southam (more about her later in the series) & continuing…
Ramasses-Miettes, Nouveaux Modes Industriels
Long on the Creel Pone radar has been this pair of LPs by French bandleader Philippe Doray, recorded in conjunction with the aid of his five "Asociaux Associés" & issued in 1977 & 1980, respectively, via Jean-Marc Patrat & José Serré's Gratte-Ciel & Invisible, the house-label of the inimitable Jacques Pasquier's Société Coopérative d'Ouvriers-Producteurs Artistiques. Centered around Doray's Synthi VCS3 playing & sprech-stimme vocal stylings, the selections here run the gamut from puerile, absurd…
Parmak Çocuk, Çizmeli Kedi
While there’s no explicit date listed anywhere within, I’m guessing the pair of 45rpm 7”s in question - released only in Turkey - date to the mid-60s, with each featuring Solmaz Sporel reading a different fairly tale over a completely amazing Musique Concrète tape-backing by Ilhan Mimaroglu, produced at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York. Personally, these particular outings are some of the most gratifyingly zonked things I’ve ever heard, having much to do with the langua…
Le Crabe Qui Jouait Avec La Mer, Conte De Noël
"Le Crabe Qui Jouait Avec La Mer" is a beyoot of a radio-play, based on a short story by Rudyard Kipling, narrated by Jacques Gripel & featuring one of the only full-length bits of Musique Concrète by the ORTF / INA-GRM aligned composer Philippe Arthuys. While heavy french texts pervade the goings on throughout, with it’s all-ages appeal, it’s kind of the first Creel Pone that’s for everybody; "Crabe's" absolutely gorgeous cover - with it’s depiction of psychedelic crustaceans - only sweetens…
Independent Electronic Music Composer
Now that the Creel-Pone series has reached its teens, its time for an irreverent late-60s blast of heavy Synth-Freakout / Tape-Psych weirdness from this Cicero, Illinois based composer Edward M. Zajda, about whom i can’t find a single bit of information - other than that he has a piece included in a 1964 radio program called “Electronic Music in America” that’s archived in the Brandeis library. Originally issued in the late 60s on the regional Ars Nova / Ars Antiqua” label, “Independent” star…
Celebration
Even to a die-hard Early Electronic Music acolyte, Frank W. Becker's name isn't a readily familiar one, despite issuing a half-dozen LPs of vaguely Berlin-school music via Toshiba EMI while based in Japan in the mid-late 70s. "Celebration," a "Private" issue on his own Gorilla imprint, starts out sure enough with the titular, 1976 side-length bit of protracted sequencing and minimalism-inspired forms - all with a vague new-age lilt to it b/w of calming ocean noises & an almost Terry Riley-ish …
Electronomusic, 9 Images
Much in the way I was confounded by Rod “A Safe Place to Land” McKuen’s forays into noise-oriented electronic music - see: Heins Hoffman-Richter, “Symphony for Tape Delay, IBM Instruction Manual, & OHM Septet," aka "Music to Freak your Friends and Break your Lease” - this set of “Electronomusic” by RCA-Victor “Living Stereo” architect - he recorded the vast majority of the legendary classical label’s productions, working with Van Cliburn, Heifetz, Horowitz, Leontyne Price, Fritz Reiner, Toscan…
A l'approche du Feu Méditant
Of all the works by Jean-Claude Eloy, the 1983 "Approaching the Meditative Flame...", for 27 instrumentalists of the "Gagaku" orchestra from Japan, and two choruses of "Shômyô" Buddhist monks (a work known partially in the West by a double LP album "Harmonia Mundi") and more particularly, "Anâhata", for five traditional soloists from Japan (three instrumentalists and two monk singers), percussions, and a major electro-acoustic part (presented in different festivals in Europe) – are the two works…
Naši Hostia: Experimental Studio Bratislava Series, vol. 3
This Series of electro acoustic music and Musique Concrète has started in 2015 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Experimental Studio Bratislava, Exs. Series 1 introduced us to Ina Hudba/Other Music from the first generation of Slovak avant-garde composers recorded in the Exs, mostly with self-built electronic equipment behind the Iron Curtain. Series 2 provided a platform for Nova Generacia/New Generation of Slovak composers using Western equipment – now integrat…
Invisible(s) Archipelago(s) #1 – Serendib rhythms
"The Unfathomless Series returns with another pair of fine releases, whose moods are polar opposites. Five Elements Music‘s lokrum patterns draws the listener in, while Stéphane Marin’s Invisible(s) Archipelago(s) n°1 – Serendib rhythms contains sounds that many would choose to avoid. Now to Sri Lanka, a land of many islands, whose sounds have been worked into a single composition by Stéphane Marin. The title may be unwieldy (Invisible(s) Archipelago(s) #1 – Serendib rhythms), but the idea is no…