19. V.A./ ELECTRONIC PANORAMA: “Electronic Panorama – Paris, Tokyo, Utrecht, Warszawa”

19. V.A./ ELECTRONIC PANORAMA: “Electronic Panorama – Paris, Tokyo, Utrecht, Warszawa” (Philips – 6740.001) (4 LP Set: Excellent ‾ near Mint/ Box Set: Excellent/ Booklet: Excellent). Awesome copy, top shape. Electronic gurus include: Malec: Spot. Ferrari: Visage V. Reibel: Two variations en etoile. Parmegiani: Ponomatopees II; Generique. P. Schaeffer-Henry: Bidule en ut. Malec: Dahovi II. P. Schaeffer: Etude aux allures Bayle: Solitioudc (ORTF Research Music Group). Vink: Screen. StibilJ: Rainbow. Weiland: Textuur. Cats: Lux. Maschayeki: Shur. Ponse: Radiophonie I. Kunst: Expulsion. Koenig: Funklion blau (Utrecht Studio for Electronic Music). Mayuzumi: Nlandara. Ishii: Kyoo. Shibata: Improvisation. Moroi: Shosanke (Tokyo Radio NHM Studio). Penderecki: Psalrnus. Dobrowoiski: Music for magnetic tape and oboe solo (Janusz Banaszek, oboe). Nordheim: Solitaire. Kotonskl: Microstructures. B. Schaffer: Symphonic/Symphony (Polish Radio Experimental Studio). “All this music crackles with intelligence. Evincing the quickness and edginess of characters brimming over with sparkle. The box is a head-to-head of the four major electronic studios of the day; the GRM of the ORTF (Paris), The University of Utrecht (Netherlands), Radio NHK (Tokyo) and The Warsaw Radio Studio of Experimental Music (Poland...) and frankly once you've heard it you'll wanna dig a huge hole in the ground and fill it with your Nurse With Wound and Autechre (et al.) records. Somehow no other experimental electronic music comes near this stuff. On a similar note I recently read Autechre going on about how they didn't think Stockhausen was "all that" and my lip curled. SHUT UP you dweebs! Go fiddle with your multi-tracks and leave the dude alone. If you had any idea of the gargantuan scale of the work involved in making this music! The slav-ish blinding toil these tape-edits constitute. Go on (you total saps) hit that "Avant Garde" Cubase preset and act all-superior. There's a whole other dimension to this of course, the reason this music is so super-humanly powerful and unexpected is that it emerged from the ravaged psyches of the Second World War. This is particularly true when you're talking about Stockhausen (here only in spirit) and Xenakis; the former whose mother was murdered by the Nazi's for being "insane" the latter who lost half his face fighting in the Greek Resistance movement. These people are drawing on emotional resources the scale and depth of which you can't even imagine. Disc one is the cheese. Frankly the French have it. Parmegiani's "Ponomatopees II" is a dizzying seething swathe. A pile-up of snatches of speech folded and sliced, extremely influential on later INA_GRM alumni like Phillip Mion. Parmegiani was very much Pierre Schaeffer's protégé, and as such he works close to the spirit of Musique Concrete. If you don't know it (and apologies if you do) the celebrated "essential moment" of Music Concrete came when Schaeffer cut the sound of a bell being struck from a recording, leaving only the sound of it's ring. The whole idea is right there, decontextualise a real-life sonic event and impel the listener to listen to it on it's own merits. Parmegiani's later work explores this sound-as-sound idea with breath-taking power. Also, and this EVERYONE should hear, Francois Bayle's "Solitioude" (1969) which the composer describes as such: "Irreverent movement, in spite of a series of light genuflexions (to Duke Ellington...Boris Vian...the Soft Machine)". To my mind it is the defining text for the Student Riots of the previous year, featuring elements of the sounds of the street battles of that confrontation and, get this, guitar parts provided by David Allen (The Soft Machine, Gong etc). In fact the Bayle and Parmegiani recordings, the latter of which is: "inspired by...some of the vocal ravings of pop singers" should dispel the lie that this music is in anyway an ivory tower undertaking. The Japanese disc has, as one might expect, a more contemplative yearning. Toshiro Mayuzumi's "Mandara" has these flitting dragonfly in a swamp fx, and the tone is markedly less strident. Listenable even ;-) I also like Makoto Moroi's "Shosanke" which: "is a suite of six variations on a trumpet sound traditionally associated with the Buddhist "Ceremony of Water" It's amazing how the symbolic possibilities inherent in electronic music are seized on so early in the day. Decade after decade we run across the same themes, usually peaking from time-to-time as demand for "depth" in electronic music varies. For example you can hear scant evidence of these characteristics in Grime, though I'd argue Wiley's tracks are picking up on it, particularly the whole frozen wastes shtick he's peddling. Actually Erik Davis's "Techgnosis" book was pretty good on the mile-wide currents running between the esoteric and electronic music. The contemplative, the other (via 3rd world music and elements thereof) the occult, the convergance of high and low culture. It's all here. The Warsaw and Utrecht crews also have a good bash. Krzysztof Penderecki's "Psalmus" (1961), the only purely electronic piece of his I'm aware of is splendid. Gabba fans take note, ha ha. Huge 2mm gaps punctuated by gloomy passing icebergs. Arne Nordheim also contributes a track. (I'm having real fun with this!) Of the Dutch lot Koenig is "firing on all cylinders." (Woebot).Price: 450 Euro