Bertrand Dubedout - Aux Lampions (Metamkine, 1994)

How perfect is this one? Three pieces, each for a single sound source, an accordion, bells, and, well, can't quite place the last one; familiar sounds begin and then slowly things are chopped to bits, smeared across time with the grandiose studio treatment. And it wouldn't be quite as good if the man making it's name weren't Dubedout. This brief work from 1981 for Metamkine's Cinema for the Ear series constitutes the bulk of Bertrand Dubedout's available recorded output. And it's a shame too, as he really nails what makes tape music so appealing, that ability to remove the timeline from music. Would love to hear more from this fellow.

Aux Lampions

Maciunas Ensemble - Number Made Audible (Het Apollohuis/Apollo, 1993)

Another Paul Panhuysen vehicle, this one named for Fluxus innovator George Maciunas and functioning more as a study in acoustics. Joined by Jan Van Riet, Leon van Noorden, and Mario Van Horrik on a number of handmade instruments (long-stringed duochords & monochords of wood and aluminum, modified guitars) as well as cellos, Panhuysen conjures rich harmonics and overtones through a variety of bowed and plucked techniques that aren't always tied to the drone. Often a steady mallet will drive the strings or in the case of the spring strings, a simple pluck is all that is needed for a variety of textural variations.



Hear ye!

Musique Concréte Soundtracks To Experimental Short Films, Vol. 3 & 4 (New England Electric Music Company, 2001/6)

Marching onward, we have two more volumes of the Musique Concréte Soundtracks To Experimental Short Films series. A reduction in staff this time, though without a doubt maintaining a competitive stride with quality. The third volume narrows the time frame to 1962 through 1964, looking at Pierre Henry's sountrack to a documentary about the cephalopod and another ferocious offering from Kotoński. The fourth volume singles in on some Bernard Parmegiani works, one from 1966 and the other from 1967.

Volume three features:

Pierre Henry - Les Amours de la Pleuvre (dir: Painleve, 1964)
Wlodzimierz Kotoński - Labyrinthe (dir: Lenica, 1962)

And on the fourth we find:

Bernard Parmegiani - Steinberg (dir: Kassovitz, 1966)
Bernard Parmegiani - L'Arraignelephant (dir: Kamler, 1967)

Didn't fair as well tracking down the accompanying films this time, but Jan Lenica's Labyrinthe is a breathtaking stop motion work and should at least suffice until the remaining two volumes appear. Actually, L'Arraignelephant turned up as well!

Enjoy!

Hugh Davies - Tapestries (Ants, 2005)

Hugh Davies is probably best known as an improviser and an inventor of bizarre instruments, but all of his activities tie back to his early interest in electronic music. He served for many years as Stockhausen's personal assistant and following that acted as archivist for GRM. Point of the matter being, it should be no stretch of the imagination that Davies tucked a few tape compositions under his belt. The bulk of material here dates back to his time in the 1980s at Goldsmiths' College. Heard amidst these pieces are almost graceful semitone ascensions that convey a level of experience gathered while working under Stockhausen. Included as well is a fine piece of sonic ecology from 2000, roughly five years before Davies' unfortunate passing.

Have a listen.

Akio Suzuki - Ha Go Ro Mo (Gelbe Musik, 1999)

Akio Suzuki is a Japan-based sound artist, born in North Korean Pyongyang in 1941. Following several years of sound research with a focus on the topography of sound and the nature of reverberation, he began building his own instruments, many of which exploiting those very concepts that had so endeared him. Ha Go Ro Mo was written for his Suzuki-type glass harmonica, a set of glass pipes of varying size on which he either gently finesses or tinkles with with mallets. In doing so, the resonances fill the room, resulting in a variety of naturally occurring melodic artifacts. This recording is from a performance in Naru-Hill, Tango Kyoto, Studio Hotarukago, on June 26, 1996.


Listen.

Horacio Vaggione - La Maquina De Cantar (Cramps, 1978; Ampersand, 2001)

Pictured above is the cover for the Cramps label release of Horacio Vaggione's La Maquina de Cantar as part of their Nova Musicha series. Vaggione is an Argentinian composer with a particular interest in granular synthesis and micromontage. The material here dates between 1971 and 1972 and is of the gloopy sci-fi spirally into oblivion variety. The title work predates his interest in micromontage, instead honing in on the synthesizing abilities of the IBM computer, giving way to heavily layered, reckless arpeggiation of synthetic textures. The second, aptly named "Ending", continues the sequenced madness, however on a Mini Moog and a Yamaha organ, opting for a spacier feel with a pulse that aims for the top of the head rather than the chest.



La Maquina de Cantar [rs]
La Maquina de Cantar [mu]

Henk Badings / Dick Raaijmakers - Electronic Music (Epic, 1961)

A tag team effort from two of the heavyweights in Dutch tape music coming straight out of the mean streets of the Philips Electronic Studio in Eindhoven. Badings founded the studio in 1956. I still have a hard time fathoming that Epic released this, though I know those were different times. The three Badings contributions cover a wide expanse, beginning with a violin-based electro-acoustic piece and continuing with a pair of oscillator-heavy wig outs, one for quadraphonic sound (rendered all the way down to a paltry stereo here) and the other boasting use of every possible piece of equipment in Philips (sine wave generators, sawtooth generator, noise generator, pulse generators, modulators, filters, reverberation apparatus, concrete sound sources!). Raaijmakers, by contrast, offers a brief push-pull study beginning in a fairly conventional structure that ascends to some of the drastic and wild jump-cuts that earned Raaijmaker the love of kids and adults alike.

Give it a listen.