Bernard Parmegiani - La Création du Monde (1986)

Bernard Parmegiani is a French composer (born in 1927) who belonged to the Groupe de Recherche Musicale (GRM) founded in Paris by Pierre Schaeffer. Among many compositions, La Création du Monde is probably the best introduction to his musical universe and to his unique way to blend together sounds from different origins, concrete, acoustic, electronic. Parmegiani creates unique soundscapes suggesting ephemeral events, various material surfaces and shapes, the motions of air, the transparancy or non transparancy of space, the plays and illusions of sonic mirrors surrounding the listener.

La Création du Monde reminds me early Tangerine Dream albums such as Zeit or Atem: this music is abstract but generates so many inner visions, it plays with sounds and spaces in a very visual way, it is ambient and quiet while exploring all the dimensions of the "objets sonores" that are the trademark of Pierre Schaeffer and his followers at the the GRM. 

This music should be listened to late at night, at a low level: you will be surrounded by unknown flying sonic objects and through your closed eyes, you will see the creation of the universe...

link: mp3 / 320

password: olduvai

part1

part2

Stuart Dempster - Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel (1985)

Art would be so boring if there was not a part of crazyness in it. The recording industry would be just a routine if there were only studio sessions, without risks and imagination... Life becomes more interesting when one is going to the very end of his (her ?) dreams, concepts, abilities..

Most of New Albion records, this innovative company based in San Francisco, shared such features. They are extreme, exciting, experimental, innovative, and never, never they take into account commercial, economic, market data, to frame creativity within borders and limits.

Stuart Dempster is a veteran composer and performer in the American new music scene.

This Cistern Chapel project  is crazy, incredible, bold, on the edge... 

Stuart Dempster and his trombone class went inside a giant water tank close to Seattle. In this place, there is a natural reverberation of 45 seconds...  Conches,  Dijderidu, Tibetan cymbals and nine trombones create these unique soundscapes, atmospheric drones, ambient climates, multi-dimensional acoustic spaces...

Meditation ? Exploring the borders of consciousness ? Mapping new audio territories ?

These Underground Overlays do not allow simple definitions. They are an invitation to share a unique acoustic and ambient experience.

If you think that true musical creation should open new spaces and break all the existing borders, then you should definitely explore the superb ambient world of Stuart Dempster and his students...

Enjoy ! 

link: mp3 / 320

StD.UndOv.zip

password: olduvai

Propeller Island - Hermeneutic Music (1988)

Lars Stroschen is a multimedia artist living in Berlin, working in many different fields, such as photography, architecture, design of furnitures, drawing and music. As a musician, he started in the late eighties a solo project called Propeller Island (after the name of a Jules Vernes novel). He collected original sounds recorded during his travels and built up a electronic music studio. He composed various pieces for dance performance at the Berliner Schaubühne and in 1988, got a contract with the German Erdenklang label. During the following years, he creates his own label and will release many other records with music and sound sculptures, or unusual sounds libraries on CD-Roms. He was also involved into TONART, a composer community featuring, among others, Conrad Schnitzler: they released five records of extreme and fascinating avant-garde music.

Hermeutic Music is Propeller Island's first CD. Relying on various synthesizers, audio computers and samplers, on grand piano and gongs, on goblin voices and gamelan chorus, the 18 tracks of this album provide us with a very original electronic music, ambient and experimental at the same time, focussing on the sound design and cultures, on the painting of climates with electronic layers and soundscapes recorded in various locations. It is strange, lightly surrealist, very remote from the music of the so-called Berlin school (Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze), although it shares with its great forerunners a kind of quest for originality, for new sounds and new composition patterns.

This Hermeneutic music is not hermetic. Let's say it provides the listener with a creative part: it is up to you to make sense of it, and you should not miss the trip  ;-)

link: mp3 / 320

PIHM.zip

password: olduvai

PS) Lars Stroschen created a unique "art hotel" in Berlin: he conceived all the design and furnitures. This post is illustrated with a few views of this hotel rooms...

Hans Otte - The book of Sounds (1984)

Hans Otte (1926-2007) was a very creative German composer and artist, as creative in poems and drawings as in sound installations or music for theatrical plays. He helped a lot in promoting in Germany artists such as John Cage, David Tudor, Terry Riley, La Monte Young, in his Bremen radio Festival. As a musician, Hans Otte was a student of Paul Hindemith and of piano maestro Walter Gieseking. 

The Book of the Sounds or Das Buch der Klänge is among Hans Otte most significant compositions. He played live this composition in many places. This 1984 recording by the Kuckuck German record company is the best introduction to his musical world, where Western minimalism meets Eastern spiritual traditions. John Cage, Terry Riley, Morton Feldman are obvious references, if one tries to compare Hans Otte's piano music to someone else...

What fascinates me in this CD is the quest for new sounds through a traditional musical instruments...

Hans Otte conceived and played piano as anyone else...

For lovers of experimental music, this original CD calls another one: "Das Buch Der Klange" played by Herbert Hencke on ECM New Music...

The interest of Manfred Eicher and ECM for the compositions of Hans Otte is enough to tell its importance in the landscape of contemporary music...

Link: mp3 / 320

BofS1.zip

BofS2.zip

password: olduvai

Hubert Bognermayr & Harald Zuschrader - Erdenklang Computerakustische Klangsinfonie (1982)

This record is part of the history of electronic and computer music. In 1982, it was avant-garde... In 2008, it is a vintage recording, although a part of its innovative concept and new aesthetics is still alive and challenges the listener...

Hubert Bognermayr and Harald Zuschrader's album provided the German record company Erdenklang with its artistic manifesto: exploring new directions in electronic music and deviating from the cosmic genre of the so-called "Berliner school".

The Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument offered new sampling and sequencing possibilities, a new level of sound quality, through its digital technologies,  and it was heavily used in this "Computerakustische Klangsinfonie". Mixing together concrete and natural noises, industrial sounds and samples of a large vocal chorus or of various acoustic instruments, Bognermayr and Zuschrader were exploring a new style of electronic music, experimental and popular, melodic and abstract  at the same times, avant-garde without being hermetic.

link: mp3 320

ErdCompSyn.zip

password: olduvai

Herbert Distel - La Stazione (1990)

This is truly an amazing and beautiful CD, released on the Hat Hut "Now series" label, that reminds me of Brian Eno's On land or of some urban soundscapes of Blade Runner. 

The basic materials of these two long tracks (26:31 and 19:24) are field recordings in the Central Station in Milan (Italy): noises, voices, announcements, etc. These materials are processed electronically (delays, reverbs, harmonizers...), organized in loops, mixed and superimposed in such a way that the result is an ambient and hypnotic symphony, where concrete sounds and announcement voices are metamorphosed into strange tonal and rythmical patterns.

These two compositions were premiered at the Kunstmuseum in Berne on March 2, 1990, and were played on a broadcast of Radio DRS2, on May 16, 1990.

I quote some words of Heinz Reber in the booklet: "The work is an enigma. As well as the only empty space, the short rest, the quiet, the silence before the powerful, dignified beat, before the low sound. One (still) throws a nostalgic glance at the sensuous nature from an immovable observation point, referring to the analogous noise in that station hall. The individual sequences dissociate: sound becomes a tonal material - scarcely a hint, fine. In fact, meanings get lost in this aimless place".

Deep and strange atmospheric music, painting unexpected soundscapes and blending sounds and noises, La Stazione will change the way you will walk through a railway station hall...

link: mp3 / 320

HDLaSta.zip

password: olduvai

Vangelis - Beaubourg (1978)

Well, this is probably not the the most successful and popular album of Vangelis... but thirty years after its release, Beaubourg is still as innovative and surprising as it was... This music celebrates the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, also called "Centre Beaubourg", which is the place, among others,  of a great museum of contemporary art and also of IRCAM, a research center devoted to contemporary music.

With this great album, Vangelis shows the extent of his skills and of his musical universe. Abstraction, sonic painting and sculpture, multidimensional space, electro-acoustic music where melody still plays its part: it is difficult to find the right words to describe these two long compositions, unveiling an unknown side of Vangelis musical world.

This 1978 album is a superb musical and technical achievement, since it was recorded with analog synthesizers and with analog tape recorders, without computer and composition softwares...

It is avant-garde music with a human feeling and breathe, with a vision, and also with a challenge defying the usual borders between "academic musicians", belonging to a research institution such as IRCAM, and independent composers, such as Vangelis, who took the risk to offer this work to a large audience...

If you don't know this album, be bold enough to listen to it !  ;-)

link: mp3 / 320

VaBeau.zip

pass: olduvai