Luc Ferrari - Interrupteur / Tautologos 3 (1970)

Two pieces of avant-garde minimalism & free jazz/rock hybrid oddness, courtesy of French composer Luc Ferrari (1929-2005).  Ferrari was one of the founders of Groupe de Recherches Musicales along with Pierres Schaeffer and Henry, and worked extensively with tape music, electroacoustic sound, and also musical melanges like Interrupteur & Tautologos 3.  Those two pieces made up this classic 1970 LP - reissued in 1999 with the cover art above.

Interrupteur/Tautologos 3 was released on LP by EMI La Voix De Son Maître/Pathé Marconi as part of the Perspectives Musicales series - see also these entries by Xenakis; EIDMC Paris cond. Simonovich again supply the ensemble parts.  In both pieces, Ferrari was trying out a form of musical stasis that would self-evolve with a series of random events.  Interrupteur runs for 19 minutes (on CD, both works are split into possibly arbitrary track divisions) against the backdrop of an ongoing drone, with a kind of avant-garde classical meets free-jazz style overlay.  Tautlogos 3 is more random and jagged in nature, but a chugging guitar gets it into gear at points, as does an imitation of an ambulance siren that develops with more instruments adding to it.  Both are fanastic pieces of musical experimentation, well worth headphone immersion.

Original LP cover, 1970

link

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Iannis Xenakis - EIDMC De Paris conducted by Konstantin Simonovich: Atrées, Morsima-Amorsima etc (2010 compi, rec. 1968-9)

Double-CD collection of all the Xenakis works recorded for EMI La Voix De Son Maître/Pathé Marconi's Perspectives Musicales imprint in the late 60s.  The legendary series only ran to around ten releases, but was packed with pioneering music; their logo and eyecatching cover designs (see original LP covers below) were homaged by Sonic Youth in the late 90s/early 2000s.  There's a couple of solo pieces included here amongst ensemble work by the Ensemble Instrumental De Musique Contemporaine De Paris conducted by Konstantin Simonovich.

Four of the pieces here belong to Xenakis' family of 'ST' (stochastic) works, where in 1962 he devised a composing algorithm to be fed into the IBM 7090 computer.  Atrées (ST/10-3) starts off Disc 1, with its five parts that can be played in any order (1, 3, 5, 2, 4 in this case), followed by Morsima-Amorsima, which only used a small amount of leftover ST output.  Both have plenty of the classic Xenakian glissandi, sounding as if the music is sliding off the page.  Disc 1 is rounded out by the two solo pieces, in which Xenakis turned geometric functions into music: Nomos Alpha for cello (alternate recording here), and Herma for piano (alternate recording here).

On Disc 2, ST/4 is a string quartet in which the cello has to downtune during performance to reach the lowest notes assigned to it, and the piece itself is a reduction of ST/10-1080262, also featured here.  Leaving the computer program behind, Xenakis returned to geometry for Akrata, completed 1965 and featuring his other sonic trademark of the time, that great staccato pulsing momentum.  Completing the collection are Achorripsis ("jets of sound"), his first stochastic work from 1957, and my favourite thing here: the 1962 piece for orchestra and children's choir, Polla Ta Dhina.  The choir chants the text from Sophocles' Hymn To Man on a single pitch whilst the orchestra unleashes hell behind them - it could make great horror movie music.  Perhaps befitting this being the six hundred and sixty-sixth post on this blog...

Atrées / Morsima-Amorsima / ST 4 / Nomos Alpha - Perspectives Musicales LP, 1968

ST 10-1,080262 / Polla Ta Dhina / Akrata / Achorripsis - Perspectives Musicales LP, 1969

Perspectives Musicales LP that included Herma, 1968

Disc 1 link
Disc 2 link
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Previously posted at SGTG:
Evryali/Herma
Phlegra, Jalons etc
Oresteïa
Synaphaï
Persephassa
Ata, Jonchaies etc
Pléiades/Psappha
Bohor etc
Kraanerg
Terretektorh/Nomos Gamma
La Légende D'Eer
Persepolis

Info source credit: Xenakis: His Life In Music (James Harley, ISBN 0415971454)