Bernard Szajner - Superficial Music (1981)

Dark and eerie electronics from French musician, lighting engineer and instrument builder Bernard Szajner.  Regarding the latter discipline - remember the laser harp used by Jean-Michel Jarre?  Szajner designed it, getting the idea from a sci-fi novel.  Superficial Music was his second album, and for its first suite (same title) Szajner took some tapes from his first album Visions Of Dune and reversed them, slowed them down and applied sparing effects.  The result is a nicely queasy, almost industrial-sounding mulch.

Speaking of industrial music, that genre might've become infamous in some respects for overusing Holocaust tropes - but on the second suite here, Osweicim, Szajner was coming from a place of genuine familial suffering.  His Jewish parents managed to keep themselves and baby Bernard hidden during WWII, but his uncle Moszek "disappeared in Auschwitz".  The sonic output of this remembrance is ghostly, shimmering dark ambience.  After the album proper, this reissue adds a couple of brighter (but still minor-key) tracks recorded a year later - the subtle synth sequencing on Inverted Area is particularly good.

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