Franco Degrassi & Gianni Lenoci - Franco Degrassi Gianni Lenoci (1998)

Earliest of a handful of collaborations between avant-garde composer and improviser Franco Degrassi (b. 1958, Bari) and fellow Italian Gianni Lenoci (1963-2019), a jazz pianist and composer from Monopoli.  The eight untitled tracks on this album credit both artists with "piano, computer, environmental sounds and acoustical instrument sounds", and after initial tracks focused on piano then concrete sounds, progress to various amalgamations of both.  The piano textures and sounds of the room can be loud and grating, or richly textured and meditative, adding up to just under an hour of closely-observed possibilities in improvised sound.

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pw: sgtg

Gerry Hemingway - Electro-Acoustic Solo Works 1984-95 (1996)

Over an hour of sound-shifting from composer and jazz drummer Gerry Hemingway, b. 1955 in New Haven.  As might be expected, most of his sound sources here are percussive, but manipulated extensively to create compelling worlds of sound and atmosphere.

Five works are presented in mostly chronological order, starting with Waterways (1983-4).  As the title suggests, it grew from actual recordings of the flow of a stream and isolated water droplets to representations of these textures by percussion ensemble.  The four-part evocation of life in an Arctic landscape, Aivilik Rays (1988-90) is next, creating a cinematic immersion over nearly 25 minutes with treated sounds of wind, birds, plus percussion and synthesised sound.

A couple of shorter pieces follow: Totem (1985) is a particularly ear-catching collection of tape-shifted sounds from junk percussion and broken glass, and Chatterlings (1995) brings Hemingway's sound up to date for the era of this release, with MIDI sampling/triggering of wood, metal and skin percussion.  To round off a really enjoyable collection, we get another lengthy exploration, this time of different overlapping sound groups in Polar (1990-6).  Really enjoying the way this album reveals lots of subtleties on repeat listens.

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Luciano Berio / Bruno Maderna - Electronic Works (1992 compilation of pieces created 1958-62)

Great collection of early electronic/ electroacoustic/ tape music by Luciano Berio (1925-2003) and Bruno Maderna (1920-1973), in the years following their joint founding of the Studio Di Fonologia Musicale Di Radio Milano.  After WDR Köln and GRM Paris, this was intended as a third resource in Europe for producing new music with innovative electronics and tape manipulation.

Over an hour of engrossing sounds on this BV Haast CD effectively gives us a short album's worth from each composer, starting with Berio and the jittering sounds of Momenti (1960).  The avant-garde classical singer Cathy Berberian (who was married to Berio at the time) is heavily featured on the rest of the material, with cut-up fragments of James Joyce (1958) and then in a lengthy exploration of more primal vocal sounds on Visage (1961).

From Maderna we get two sixteen-minute pieces, starting with Le Rire (1962).  It's a great immersion in electronic sound and fragments of laughter and chatter that might be my pick of the disc.  Lastly, Invenzione Su Una Voce aka Dimenzione II (1960) features Cathy Berberian performing vocal phonemes prepared by the German poet Hans G Helm.  All incredible stuff to listen to, especially if you liked previous Luigi Nono posts.

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Berio/Maderna at SGTG:

The New Music, Vol. 2 (scroll past big list)

Berio at SGTG:

Coro

Sequenza IXb

Pierre Henry - Variations Pour Une Porte Et Un Soupir - Voile D'Orphee (1987 compilation)

 

Couple of ear-bending slabs of early tape music today, courtesy of French musique concrète pioneer Pierre Henry (1927-2017).  Taking up most of this 80s CD is the 48 minute Variations Pour Une Porte Et Un Soupir - it's in 25 sections but all runs as one track, so can be a bit daunting to approach, but it's well worth getting immersed in.  The 'variations for a door and a sigh', with a musical saw in there too, were assembled in 1963 from Henry using this small group of basic sounds, manipulating them on tape and with various effects, to turn a squeaky attic door into a veritable orchestra of different tonal qualities.

Skipping back a decade for the second track on the disc, Voile D'Orphee (Veil of Orpheus) is one of the primordial pieces of tape music that still sounds extraordinary today - it's like a proto-Nurse With Wound track, but dates back to a time when Steven Stapleton was only four years old.  Voices, orchestration and a harpsichord are twisted out of shape over 15 minutes of stunning, groundbreaking sound-shifting, to evoke the epic tragedy of the Greek myth that gives the piece its title.

 

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Iannis Xenakis - Musique Electroacoustique (2001 compilation)

Two great slabs of 80s electroacoustic immersion from an old SGTG favourite.  The first and longer of the two is Pour La Paix (1981-2) for tape, choir and narrator, and across 26 minutes it tells the story of two children who grow up to be enemy soldiers.  Even if you can't follow the lengthy French text (written by Françoise Xenakis, the composer's wife), it's still a great sonic experience that suggests various radio stations trying to tune in to the narrative, whilst the choir sing key words and phrases from the text.

The second piece shifts from earthly concerns out into space, in the 15 minutes of Voyage Absolu Des Unari Vers Andromeda (1989).  Commissioned for the Goethe Institute of Japan's International Exposition of Paper Kites, it was fully composed on the UPIC system developed by Xenakis, and is a striking evocation of outer-space exploration in the far future.  This track could've sat nicely on Xenakis' Electronic Muisc compilation (see Bohor, etc in links list), where it would've bridged the chronological gap between Hibiki-Hana-Ma (another exposition-in-Japan commission) and S709, one of his latest computer-generated works.

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Previously posted at SGTG:

Nuits

Rebonds B

Akrata

Atrées, Morsima-Amorsima etc
Evryali/Herma
Phlegra, Jalons etc
Oresteïa
Synaphaï
Persephassa
Ata, Jonchaies etc
Pléiades/Psappha
Bohor etc
Kraanerg
Terretektorh/Nomos Gamma
La Légende D'Eer
Persepolis

Suzanne Ciani, London Contemporary Orchestra et al - Pioneers Of Sound (BBC Proms 2018)

A fantastic feast for the ears from the BBC Proms two years ago, with music by some true sonic pioneers - and all pieces recorded in surround sound for maximum effect on headphones.  The concert starts subtly with an atmospheric piece of tape music by Delia Derbyshire, before bursting into life, and coming bang up to date, with Knockturning by Manchester-based sound artist Cee Haines (stylized as CHAINES).

Laurie Spiegel's music is featured next, but with no electronics as might be expected - Only Night Falls is a rare orchestral work by Spiegel.  The next part of the concert, and the highlight for me, returns to electronic music in stunning style, as Suzanne Ciani sits down at the Buchla synth for her Improvisation On Four Sequences.  It's a heady immersion in expertly-tweaked electronics, and for any connoisseurs out there of "radio presenters who can't pronounce Moog properly", you're in for an extra treat at the end of it.

The stage is then reconfigured for the two orchestras (one amplified with echo effects), electronics and turntables required for the epic finale.  Daphne Oram's Still Point was written in 1949 when she was just 23, and more than lives up to the Pioneers Of Sound concept.  The score was thought lost until some drafts emerged and led to a Proms premiere in 2016, then a full score was found shortly afterwards which at last allowed for the full performance captured here.  Next week - music from this year's Proms.

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BBC Proms in Japan: The Experimental Session (3rd November 2019)

This concert took place at the fringes of the first BBC Proms in Japan, a six-day festival last November headed up by the Scottish Symphony Orchestra.  At the EdgeOf venue in Shibuya, Tokyo, artists and composers from the Japanese avant-garde journeyed into sound for an engrossing hour and a half, and the concert was first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Boxing Day.

The first performer is Sugai Ken, who creates 'vernacular electronic music' that he describes as "neo-japonica".  It's a fascinating 20 minutes of drone & glitch electro-acoustic sound, vocal samples and more.  The middle set spotlights two instrumentalists, on saxophone and piano.  Firstly, Masanori Oishi performs two solo sax pieces, followed by Emiko Mirua on two pieces for piano, including a lovely Takemitsu miniature.

Oishi and Miura then perform together, on a short improvisation and a lengthy piece by Jacob Ter Veldhuis (aka JacobTV) entitled Sho-Myo, which translates as 'voice and wisdom'.  Set in three movements and sampling Japanese Buddhist chants in the first two, it's a gorgeous sound-world that I'd say is the highlight here.  To close, American composer Carl Stone (who has been resident in Japan since the 90s) performs a stunning 25-minute improv with voice artist Akaihirume.

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Arsenije Jovanović / Ivana Stefanović ‎- Concerto Grosso Balcanico / Lacrimosa (1993)

Shared release between two Serbian composers, who have previously been posted here in their own right - Jovanović with an untitled collection, and Stefanović with Inner Landscape. According to the liner notes, both were asked in the Spring of 1993 to produce a piece for Austrian radio, as they "were among the most renowned radio artists in Europe."  What they brought with them were immediate and raw first-hand experiences of Yugoslavia's turbulent last days; as Jovanović noted, "There is an inevitable link to the war still being waged as I write this."

Jovanović's 16-minute Concerto Grosso Balcanico sets out a peaceful, rural scene at first, with bells, birds and sheep, but very quickly introduces tenser elements of an ominous clatter and then an electronic layer that comes on like a distant helicopter.  Barking dogs introduce a rhythmic element as some sped-up tapes enter, and the piece becomes progressively more ominous until the unmistakable sound of gunfire dominates the final minutes.

Gunshots are also the first sound used in Stefanović's 25-minute Lacrimosa, which then unfolds as a much more musical piece, albeit heavily collaged.  Samples of Requiem music from Pergolesi, Mozart, Penderecki and Britten are mixed with documentary tapes from the streets of Sarajevo in May 1992.  As Stefanović remembered: "They were all together for the last time: Serbs, Muslims and Croats."  After a final social gathering, with a poignant exchange of Shaloms, the piece ends on a plaintive acapella song.  Both these pieces are deeply affecting in their material and background story, are superbly recorded and arranged, and will definitely stay with you after listening.  Highly recommended.

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Gerard Pape - Electroacoustic Chamber Works (1998)

Five ear-bending and mind-bending journeys into transformed sound today, courtesy of Gerard Pape, born 1955 in Brooklyn.  These works all date from the mid-90s both in composition and in recording, giving this disc the homogeneous feel of an album rather than a compilation from disparate sources.  Furthermore, they all display Pape's talent for using tape and/or computer to forensically investigate and transform sound at every possible micro-level; harmonics, timbre and so on.

Two Electro-Acoustic Songs, for soprano, flute and tape/sound projection, is featured first.  The tonalities of the voice and flute start out with their pure sound before Pape subjects them to various levels of alien warping, using the UPIC system developed by Xenakis.  This is followed by Le Fleuve du Désir for string quartet and tape.  Pape makes his inspiration erm, explicit, evoking not just water and rivers, but also applying Freud's writings on the libido to "my 'river of desire'... inspired by fluid flow, real and fantasised".  Bit too much information there, Gerard, but thanks all the same.

The longest piece is next, in the 32 minutes of Monologue for bass voice and tape/sound projection.  The libretto is taken from Samuel Beckett's A Piece Of Monologue, and Nicholas Isherwood's voice has great versatility for the dramatics of the performance.  Pape's soundworld swirls and hisses around it unobtrusively, providing a suitably unsettling atmosphere.  A choral piece, Battle, follows, performed by Vox Nova with Pape on tape - the inspiration here was a dramatic scene from Clive Barker's Weaverworld.  Lastly, our old friend Daniel Kientzy is the featured soloist on the ensemble piece Makbénach, the title apparently meaning 'flesh leaving bones'.  Ensemble 2e2m provide an ever-shifting backdrop for Kientzy's unique sax sound, as Pape warps the whole thing into outer space.

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Sermilä, Honkanen, Vesala, Helasvuo, Hauta-aho - Ode To Marilyn (1974)

A very welcome first time on CD (plus a vinyl reissue) for this legendary chunk of Finnish weirdness.  Copies can be bought directly from the label at svartrecords.com, who specialize in reissues of Finnish prog, metal and jazz - definitely got my eye on that release of two Vesala live sessions.  But for today, let's listen to the sound of two composers and a bunch of jazz musicians letting their ideas run wild in the Finnish Broadcasting Company's experimental studio.

This mindwarpingly bizarre hybrid of electroacoustic music and free jazz was the brainchild of Jarmo Sermilä, a composer/trumpeter who had been leading an Experimental Music Group into sound research at the studio.  Electroacoustic composer Antero Honkanen, who was working at the studio as an engineer, was also involved.  Between them, the plan was hatched to hire some of Finland's most interesting jazz musicians - drummer Edward Vesala, fresh from one of ECM's most out-there sessions and albums of his own, bassist Teppo Hauta-aho and flautist Mikael Helasvuo - and see what happened.

After 160 hours of recordings, and poaching of some further sound effects from the studio archives, a tape of eight finished tracks was sent to Scandia Records.  The label released seven (the eighth, Awakening, is now restored on this reissue) tracks under the name Ode To Marilyn, from the poem by Marilyn Monroe sung by guest soprano Pirkkoliisa Tikka on A Doll's Cry.  And what an album it was.

Dominated by Honkanen's dark, swirling and swishing ambience (especially on his three solo tracks, Nightmares, Awakening and Midnight), the result is nothing less than proto-Nurse With Wound - in 1973 Helsinki.  The sometimes extreme dynamics of the experimental studio create an unearthly, unsettling dreamscape, with the flute, trumpet, bass, drums and organ/synth used sparingly, sometimes hanging in mid-air or subjected to other processing.  Vesala's reversed voice can also be heard on The Waves, apparently requesting further takes.  A beyond-essential cult classic.

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Electronic Music For The Mind And Body (2013 compilation, rec. 1958-62)

Cheekily parodying the title of Country Joe & The Fish's legendary psych classic, this inspired compilation from Cherry Red's él subsidiary turned back the clock a further decade for 80 minutes of truly revolutionary sound warping.  The first 35 of these 80 minutes is an entire album in itself, originally composed and recorded 1959-60: Stockhausen's still-astonishing Kontakte.  Working at WDR with Gottfried Michael Koenig, Stockhausen laid out his grandest vision yet of electronic tones, timbres and (in live situations) spatial movement.  A second version would later add in David Tudor's piano and Christoph Caskel's percussion.  Whether in that form or in this pure electronic recording, it remains a magnificent, otherworldly soundscape to get lost in.

Next up on this CD is Iannis Xenakis' Orient-Occident, already featured here, devised in 1960 as a film soundtrack for Enrico Fuchignoni, and featuring a definite Pierre Schaeffer influence.  The shortest piece on the compilation is György Ligeti's Artikulation, recorded at WDR in 1958 with the assistance of Koenig and Cornelius Cardew.  One of only two electronic pieces that Ligeti would fully realise, Artikulation certainly packs a lot into its four minutes, arranging different recordings of noises before piecing them together at random into a 'conversation' of sorts, as if inventing a new machine-language.

Lastly, we get two pieces of prime John Cage.  The 20-minute Cartridge Music was composed in 1960 for performers following a chance score, armed with phonograph cartridges and contact microphones which are then struck against various objects.  This recording is an amalgamation of four performances of the score by Cage and David Tudor in 1962.  The final track on the CD is Aria With Fontana Mix, another 1962 recording overlaying two Cage compositions - his free-score Fontana Mix (much more noisily used by Max Neuhaus a few years later) is used for various tape sources, whilst Cathy Berberian performs his vocal work Aria over the top.

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Gordon Mumma - Studio Retrospect (2000 compi of works 1964-84)

Another ear-bending and brain frying collection from Gordon Mumma, who previously featured here with Electronic Music of Theatre and Public Activity.  This CD from Lovely Music is an equally well-rounded presentation of what made Mumma's electroacoustic music so interesting - the six works here might be missing their theatrical elements, quadrophonic mixes and the like, but the pure sound is still so engrossing and often noisy and jarring that it rewards repeat listens.

Taking up the retrospective theme straight away, the opening track here is called Retrospect, a mix of earlier tracks spanning 1959 to 1982, including Chilean president Allende's quip to the New York Times on the day of his death that he'd have to be "carried out in wooden pyjamas".  This is followed by a couple of works from 1964-5, which were first released on a 1979 LP along with Megaton (see link above).  Music From The Venezia Space Theatre is a whirring, hissing piece of electronic mayhem from a live multimedia revue organised by Luigi Nono, and The Dresden Interleaf 13 February 1945 commemorates the WW2 bombing of that city with a proto-SPK grind in which the silent intervals are even more unsettling than the noise onslaughts.

From 1978, Echo-D is an extract of an evening-long dance performance, and musically is based around a pedaled D note on a harpsichord whilst a Buchla synth and other sound layers float in the space around it.  Very minimal stuff, but fascinating to listen to as it progresses over 15 minutes.  The following Pontpoint underwent a lengthy and frequently interrupted creation between 1966 and 1980.  Its eight short sequences features an instrument Mumma made frequent use of, the bandoneon, and a bowed zither, both 'cybersonically' modified by him.  The resulting sounds, that gradually mutate in pitch, timbre and rhythm, are probably my personal highlight of this collection.  There's still a four minute postscript to go though, in the nice little mix of acoustic and digital spectral sounds that makes up Epifont (1984).

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U Potrazi Za Novim Zvukom 1956-1984 - Croatian Electroacoustic Music (2016 compi)

An authoritative, and engrossing two-and-a-half-hour immersion in electroacoustic music by Croatian composers.  The criteria for inclusion on this 2CD set was that the pieces represented were either significant in the history of Croatian electroacoustic music, or the composers first work in the medium, or both.  This gives 21 tracks by 14 composers to wrap your ears around, all the way from the tape & generators heyday of the mid 50s through to 80s computer music.

The first disc covers the years 1956-1973, and fans old-school tape music will find much to love here, right from the two Ivo Malec tracks (from '56 and '61) that open the compilation.  Highlights of CD1 for me were the later Malec track Lumina, by which time that composer had hit on a stunning synthesis of orchestral and tape music; the more electronic focus of Silvio Foretić's pieces; and the chance to hear a couple of early works by Dubravko Detoni, who in 1967-8 was using vocal, percussive and piano sounds to create Phonomorphia 1 & 2.

The second disc, spanning 1969-1984, is even better.  First up is Igor Kuljerić's Impulses I (1969-70) for string quartet and tape, which could almost be an early Avram/Dumitrescu, and further highlights for me were Zlatko Pibernik's voice-warping Etida (1975) with its atmospheric backing; the epic 18 minutes of Davorin Kempf's Interferencije (1977-80) for organ and tons of electronics; and an actual appearance by Acezantez (see Detoni link above), featured on Zlatko Tanodi's eerily pulsing Echolalia (1979-80).  All in all, this compilation definitely hits the spot if you're 'in search of a new sound' as per the Croatian title.  A highly recommended mix of some wonderfully out-there music.

Disc 1
Disc 2

Klaus Hinrich Stahmer - Klanglabyrinthe (1992)

Five works spanning 1982-1992 are presented on this collection by German composer Klaus Hinrich Stahmer, b. 1941 in Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland).  Fascinated by mathematics, symmetry and geometry as well as sculpture and mythology, Stahmer's music gets explained in very dry detail in the booklet of this CD, which almost put me off.  Fortunately, there's plenty of interesting sounds to listen to at face value, which is what I always prefer to do (and write about).

Case in point would be the 17 minutes of Der Stoff, aus dem die Stille ist (1990) - if I listened to this blind, I'd probably just assume it was an environmental recording by a stream or river.  It was pretty enjoyable on those terms, without needing to know how minutely planned all the water-droplet harmonic frequencies and their timing intervals were (this part was all modulated by computer).  But hey, it is kind of fascinating that someone would impose so much structure into a recording of some... water.

Musically, my favourite piece here was Kristalgitter (1992), for computer-manipulated string quartet and the striking of stone sculptures.  The end result sounds to my ears like an early Stephan Micus recording overlaid with a less refined (check that distortion near the start!) version of Kaija Saairaho in string quartet mode.  This is followed by Labyrinth I/II (1989), with more Micus-esque stone music - this time the performers rubbed their wet hands on to granite blocks that had been cut with fine toothcomb-like grooves.  The resulting swishing sounds and resonant frequencies are manipulated by computer into a hypnotic dronescape.  A collection for repeat listenings, definitely.  The other two pieces are Ariadne's Thread, for contrabass flute and percussion, and a brief harmonica canon piece dedicated to John Cage.

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Martin Davorin Jagodic - Tempo Furioso (Tolles Wetter) (1975)

Sole album release by Martin Davorin Jagodic (b. 1935, Zagreb), who settled in France in the 1960s.  Having apparently worked at GRM, been involved in installations and performance pieces and composed numerous Cage-esque graphic scores, it's a shame there isn't more recorded evidence of Jagodic's work.  What is available here, though, is 42 minutes of top-notch sound manipulation that more than justified Jagodic's place on the Nurse With Wound list (see last Monday's post).

Starting from a stew of queasy, gently pulsing electronics, it soon becomes clear that the 'Tempo Furioso' title doesn't have anything to do with the pace of the work, and may have just been applied for ironic/comic value.  Adding to the mix are various voice snippets and loops, naturalistic sounds of lapping waves and birds (Jagodic must've been out taping in the 'great weather' of the album's subtitle), and samples of classical and rock music.  An early highlight of the second track is a lengthy sample from a period-drama radio play, surrounded by more agitated electronics, before things settle down again.  A highly recommended sound experience from start to finish.

Update!  Have received the following comment:

A website will be open for Martin Davorin Jagodic in the following month with a lot of new music, graphic scores, videos and more.
If you want to get the link when it will be ready, just send an email to bethson@free.fr.

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Trevor Wishart - Journey Into Space (1973)

Described as an "audio movie" on the original self-released vinyl labels, Journey Into Space was the first release by English electroacoustic composer Trevor Wishart (b. 1946, Leeds).  The charming DIY-ness of the double-LP's back cover is reproduced in this CD reissue, with sleevenotes very much of their time (see below), and advice that copies of the album could be obtained directly from the composer at his York University department for £3, plus 40p P&P - not exactly a bargain! - but fair play to Wishart, he'd completely self-financed the album.

One of those copies (or a subsequent release) may well have found its way into the hands of a trio of teenage sound-hounds in London, as Wishart features on the original Nurse With Wound list.  The massive amount of tape manipulation involved in Journey Into Space is a clear precursor to NWW, but in the early 70s Wishart appears to have been much more interested in making the mundane and everyday gradually warp into a fantastic dreamscape, as opposed to Stapleton's full-on surrealism.

"Journey-into-Space is the allegorical journey of a man towards self-realisation.  It begins in a strange landscape of Birth from which emerges the cry of a baby.  The man, as if waking from a dream, sets off in his car with the sounds of a space-rocket launch on his car radio.  The two journeys coalesce in his mind as he continues through many strange musical landscapes, eventually arriving at a doorway. 

On passing through the entrance-hall he emerges once more into the birth landscape, but now the music develops in an entirely new direction as the threads of the dream are drawn together."                                (from original LP liner notes)

The LP release just had four untitled sides, but this has been tidied up for CD to make Birth Dream the 13-minute introductory piece.  Comparisons to Throbbing Gristle's Medicine are perhaps inevitable, but Wishart's evocation of birth is far less, well, medical.  The main meat of the work follows - The Journey on CD runs for an uninterrupted 47 minutes, as the character's journey progresses as above from the mundane to the magical.  The 'music' as such was derived from blown bottles, children's toys and many other found objects, as well as the occasional brass honk and lots of evocative vocal sounds.  Lastly, the 18 minute Arrival does indeed draw the dream together in style, pulling together the various sound sources into a mindbending finale with an abrupt ending.  In short, fellow NWW fans will love this one - but it's also well worth anyone's time for the ingenuity in sound manipulation that Wishart was conjuring up in his University of York Electronic Music Studio.

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Régis Renouard Larivière - Futaie / Tchernoziom (2000 compi of works from '96 and '98)

Nice little EP by electroacoustic composer Régis Renouard Larivière (b. 1959, Paris), which appears to be the only release under his name.  One track, Futaie, won an Ars Electronica prize for computer music in 1996, and the other, Tchernoziom, takes one aspect of Futaie and plays around with it, totaling 32 minutes of sound manipulation that are well worth getting immersed in.

The short liner note is a bit on the academic side in a pretentious kind of way - or perhaps its just come out like that in the English translation - but the opening sentence about Futaie is nicely evocative, saying that it "unfolds like a long, slow sentence of which only the punctuation remains".  This describes pretty well the spare, stop-start sound of the first few minutes, which are based around chunky percussion and wind instrument sounds.  These slowly reverberate around in space as the track starts to mutate over its 14 minutes.

Tchernoziom, apparently named after the fertile black soil of the Ukraine, is even more interesting.  It's more rhythmical, in the computer pulses that run through it, and creates a sustained, eerie atmosphere.  If it weren't for the occasional presence of (albeit still heavily treated) acoustic instruments, presumably the source material taken from Futaie, I might think I was listening to latter-day Autechre or something.  A really striking and engrossing alien soundworld that makes me wish there were more releases available by Larivière.

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Rune Lindblad - Objekt 2: Electronic & Concrete Music 1962-1988 (1998 compi)

As promised, more Rune Lindblad - covering a wider timespan this time, making for an even more varied and interesting collection.  We pick up just after the Death Of The Moon compilation left off, with Objekt 2 (the title track) offering some lo-fi string-sawing from 1962, then there's only one further piece from that decade, the choppy, echoing voice experiments of Plasibenpius (1968-9).

Four pieces from the 70s follow, where Lindblad appears to have taken a darker, more unsettling turn.  The burbling and whirring electronics of Hälften Av Någonting are periodically interrupted by a disturbing tape recording - possibly from a horror film, but who knows?  As the Swedish title seems to suggest, it's like we're only getting 'half of something'.  Frage, from 1972, and Maskinlandskap, 1975, both suggest early Cabaret Voltaire or Throbbing Gristle - the latter title in English is, appropriately, Machine Landscape; and Tora (1972-3), given Wednesday's sad news, is now sounding rather poignant to my ears - it could've jumped in straight from the recording sessions for Can's Aumgn.

We then jump forward a decade for the last three tracks, where Lindblad seems to have got more into synths.  The tech might be more modern, but the recording is still slightly on the lo-fi side, making Innan Konsert, the longest piece here at 12 mins, sound like a bedroom synth aritiste of the very highest calibre, taking their Berlin-school influences somewhere unique.  Lagun I Uppror (lagoon in revolt) (1987) is as supremely bizarre as its title.  A sequencer pulse takes on some wild percussion rhythms and synth squeals in ever-escalating combat, before finally calling a truce to the unhinged frenzy right at the end.  Lastly, Dimstrak (1987-88) is perhaps the oddest piece of all - it's practically a sweet little new-agey folk song featuring flute-like synth accompanied by acoustic guitar.  The guitar plays the final melody just after the three-minute mark, wrapping up this fascinating collection in possibly the most weird and wonderful way possible.

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Rune Lindblad - Death Of The Moon: Electronic & Concrete Music 1953-1960 (1997 compi)

Pioneering electronic/electroacoustic/concrete works from a composer who refused to see any boundaries between these kind of tags - Gothenburg-born Rune Lindblad (1923-1991).  His first concert in 1957 saw audience members demanding refunds and critics panning the event as 'pure torture' - just the sort of thing that gets people like me mashing the 'Buy It Now' button six decades later to get hold of this compilation CD (despite its atrocious cover art - couldn't Pogus Productions have used another of Lindblad's nice woodcuts, or even the same one they had access to for the 1989 LP shown below?).

Far from sounding tortuous though, the recorded evidence on this collection is engaging stuff throughout, starting with the tape cut-ups of a social gathering mashed together with radio broadcasts, short wave noise and tape squelches of Party (1953).  Månens Död (Death Of The Moon) (1954-55) is subtler still, consisting of restrained, mournful-sounding electronics and ritualistic percussion.

Given the vintage of this material, vast cloudbanks of tape hiss are par for the course, but this just enhances the charm and un-academic accessibility.  The 'Fragment' pieces are particularly lo-fi, providing yet another uncanny missing link between '68 AMM, '71 Kluster and '75 Throbbing Gristle - apart from the almost prettily melodic mid-section of Fragment 1, and of course the fact that all three Fragments date back to 1955-56.  Lindblad's style was beginning to mature sonically and texturally by the time of Nocturne (1958), the highlight of this collection for me; and don't miss the closing Optica (1959-1960), created using damaged 16mm film and sounding like computer music way ahead of its time.  Coming soon - the other Lindblad compilation that I have, spanning the years 1962-1988.

Cover art for 'Death Of The Moon and Other Early Works' LP, 1989

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Beatriz Ferreyra - at the Electric Spring Festival, University of Huddersfield (2017)

The BBC Proms are in full swing, and I'll be on the lookout for any of the more groundbreaking sounds that could sit nicely on this blog.  For the moment, here's something that was broadcast on Radio 3's Hear And Now about a month ago, to coincide with the composer's 80th birthday (the Electric Spring performance in question took place in February).

Argentine electroacoustic composer Beatriz Ferreyra worked at INA-GRM in Paris in the 60s, and after being shown how to cut tape and mix by Pierre Schaeffer, embarked on a sonic journey that was completely her own, and which continues to this day - the longest piece here, Senderos de luz y sombras (Paths of shadows and light) was freshly minted in 2016/17 and was receiving its UK premiere at Electric Spring.

Alongside Senderos, Ferreyra's evocation of the universe before and just after the big bang, two older pieces were featured.  Echos was originally put together in the late 70s, from tapes of the composer's niece who had passed away in a car accident.  Four acapella tapes of her singing were mixed together into a wonderfully affecting whole, complete with a poignant moment of laughter at the end.   The other work is Rio de los pájaros azules (River of the blue birds) from 1998, in which a dream of a lush, Latin American landscape is channeled into a beautifully alien-sounding fantasia.  All very listenable and fascinating stuff - recommended.

link

N.B. cover art used is not from the actual Feb 2017 performance, but I believe it is a fairly recent picture - thought it would be a good fit when I found it.