Eliane Radigue – Triptych (rec. 1978, rel. 2009)

Another archival release on the always interesting Important Records for French composer Eliane Radigue, the second (I was going to say first, but that's really Pauline Oliveros by a few years) lady of extreme minimalist electronics.  The other one I have is Transamorem-Transmortem (1973); following that behemoth of glacial eternal ARP sound, Radigue took a few years out to explore Tibetan Buddhism, which would inform her music and entire life from then on. 

Returning in 1978 to create some music for a choreographed performance (at Robert Ashley's suggestion), Radigue produced the three pieces that were eventually released on this CD.  Triptych is possibly a more accesible entry point to Radigue's unqiue soundworld than Transamorem; each of these pieces has its own distinct character, and each one only lasts between 18 and 24 minutes (practically Ramones-level brevity for this composer). 

The first is an enjoyable sensory cleanse for the ears that whooshes around like a sandstorm or seashore on a distant planet, settling into an almost melodic rise and fall around the halfway point.  The second and longest is an eerie but not unpleasant quivering drone, that in its last five minutes introduces an insistent, rhythmic two-note pattern in the right channel that fades just before the end.  The triptych is completed with 20 minutes of a more rhythmic drone, almost something Tangerine Dream might have built from circa Phaedra, but much rawer and unbothered by effects and production; just pure sound.  I think that nails what I love about Eliane Radigue's music - it's like the clear mountain spring water of electronic sound, I've scarcely if ever heard anything more pure and elemental.

link

Eliane Radigue - Transamorem-Transmortem (rec. 1973, rel. 2011)

There's a lot of minimal electronics on this blog (and in my life in general) and more to come, but this is in a league of its own.  Just over an hour of droning ARP synth tones, Transamorem-Transmortem was created by French composer Eliane Radigue in 1973.  A quintessential example of her vast, monolithic electronic drone work, it was used as an installation piece, played at The Kitchen in NYC and then largely packed away in its tape box for nearly 40 years before this reissue.

From those scarce early 'live' (well, the playing and mixing of an hour-long tape in a performance space) outings of Transamorem-Transmortem, Radigue archived this description of the ideal performance conditions, reproduced in the CD liner notes:

"This monophonic tape should be played on 4 speakers placed in the four corners of an empty room.  Carpet on the floor. The impression of different points of origin of the sound is produced by the localization of the various zones of frequencies, and by the displacements produced by simple movements of the head within the acoustic space of the room.  A low point of light on the ceiling, in the center of the room, produced by indirect lighting.  Several white light projectors of very weak intensity whose rays, coming from different angles, meet at a single point."

Although this might be a bit of stretch for anyone to try recreating, Transamorem-Transmortem still has a considerable effect however you listen to it.  What looks on the surface to be simply an hour of unchanging ambient hum soon reveals its depths.  The bristling, crackling high frequencies in the left channel (the CD version has been mixed in stereo) preclude any new-agey relaxation, and the low frequencies in the right channel periodically gather force to give your senses a proper pummeling if you're sufficiently engrossed in it.  As a perfectly succinct YouTube comment puts it, "this sound made my brain full".

link