Eliane Radigue's harbour

Started by Mandryka, February 19, 2020, 11:15:32 AM

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Mandryka

Everyone knows Occam's Ocean -- but I was really pleased to find this early piece, Geelriandre, which shows, I think, a similar preoccupation with sound. Hard for me to believe that this piece is as early as 1972.

https://www.youtube.com/v/1b_usL_zDoc
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#1
Many many years ago I practised Buddhist meditation. One of the texts which the Buddhist monks used to talk about was called The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, a sort of Tibetan literature analogue of the Western . . . well I dunno, but it's canonical. I actually had a copy in English, I remember three volumes, I didn't get very far reading it. It has long been culled.

So what a pleasant surprise to come across this



It consists of someone chanting parts of the Hundred Thousand Songs in Tibetan, followed by someone presenting a translation in English, in a lovely American accent, I can't identify where but I imagine south. He sounds a bit like Jethro  in the Beverly Hillbillies.

All this set to . . , you've guessed it . . . a drone.

It's very good, great fun! Not unlike an old style BBC radio 4 Sunday afternoon programme - better than most. Recommended.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Richard Pinnell

Quote from: Mandryka on February 19, 2020, 11:15:32 AM
Everyone knows Occam's Ocean -- but I was really pleased to find this early piece, Geelriandre, which shows, I think, a similar preoccupation with sound. Hard for me to believe that this piece is as early as 1972.

https://www.youtube.com/v/1b_usL_zDoc

Geelriandre of course being an anagram of Eliane Radigue.

The Queen of all drones, but a lot more going on there too. I have all of her early works in the attic somewhere. IMO the strongest were always the Adnos works.

The recent BBC radio broadcasts of Occam's River by Dom Lash and Angharad Davies are worth tracking down if they are still available. Fantastic musicians
Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness

Mandryka

#3
Quote from: Richard Pinnell on February 26, 2020, 03:13:17 AM


The recent BBC radio broadcasts of Occam's River by Dom Lash and Angharad Davies are worth tracking down if they are still available. Fantastic musicians

Unfortunately not as far as I can see. A friend of mine heard a concert with 7 of them at Darmstadt and he said it was wonderful.

Quote from: Richard Pinnell on February 26, 2020, 03:13:17 AM

The Queen of all drones

Oh, poor old pauline Oliveros, RIP.

Quote from: Richard Pinnell on February 26, 2020, 03:13:17 AM
Geelriandre

I never noticed!
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#4


The Lappetites are a quartet of musicians who use their laptops, and they include Eliane Radigue. All I can say is that for me this was love at first listening, it is totally accessible, totally iconoclastic, totally life enhancing, 1000000 miles away from drone and Buddha, full of earworms, and indescribable.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Artem

I quite like her music. It's a total experience. I discovered her when Important Records released "Transamorem - Transmortem" and "Vice Versa, Etc."

Mandryka

Quote from: Artem on January 24, 2021, 10:36:56 AM
I quite like her music. It's a total experience. I discovered her when Important Records released "Transamorem - Transmortem" and "Vice Versa, Etc."

I just don't think I've got the genes for deep listening. To be honest I'm not at all convinced by the whole "one note and overtones" style - there's too much of it doing the rounds.  It should have started and finished with Scelsi!
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#7


Listening to the second part of her Death Trilogy, this is very classy music, not only at the level of pitches, but also at the level of pulse. It is wonderfully organic, it feels as though what is happening, the evolution of the sounds and the rhythms, is absolutely natural rather than something imposed by the composer. Even the major events - a new voice, a new timbre, seems organic.

There's even a little melody, cute and subtle, which emerges like magic out of nowhere about 2/3 of the way through. Radigue's a genius!

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

Interesting short article here


http://www.ems-network.org/IMG/pdf_EMS15_Waschbusch.pdf


Which I've been following while listening to this, Jetsun Mila


Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

T. D.

Quote from: Mandryka on January 28, 2021, 10:15:48 AM
Interesting short article here


http://www.ems-network.org/IMG/pdf_EMS15_Waschbusch.pdf


Which I've been following while listening to this, Jetsun Mila




Thanks, this is interesting to me. I live about an hour from Woodstock, NY, where there's a major Tibetan dharma center and a large community of Buddhist-influenced musicians and artists.

Mandryka

Quote from: T. D. on January 28, 2021, 10:47:59 AM
Thanks, this is interesting to me. I live about an hour from Woodstock, NY, where there's a major Tibetan dharma center and a large community of Buddhist-influenced musicians and artists.

The one to hear, without a shadow of doubt, is Trilogie de la Mort. I'm going to change the title of this thread to take in other drone composers I think.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

Radigue has created music for acoustic instruments, all named in various ways after Occam, he of razor fame. I have mixed and unsettled views of these pieces - we now have another ego between us and the music, it's not just the composer and her synthesiser any more, and that makes a huge difference, not always for the good IMO. And of course, acoustic instruments aren't as exciting sonically as synthesisers, and aren't as controllable.


There is one which, so far, seems to me an unmitigated success, and that was created with the American cellist Charles Curtis. This set was released quite recently, maybe 2020: it's a goodie.



Why it works so well is, of course, hard to explain. It's partly that Curtis manages to give an interesting and quite complicated structure to the whole - it's not just a drone getting louder till it reaches a climax at the end, as it were. So it's not boring and predictable.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

T. D.

Quote from: Mandryka on February 22, 2020, 07:27:49 AM
Many many years ago I practised Buddhist meditation. One of the texts which the Buddhist monks used to talk about was called The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, a sort of Tibetan literature analogue of the Western . . . well I dunno, but it's canonical. I actually had a copy in English, I remember three volumes, I didn't get very far reading it. It has long been culled.

So what a pleasant surprise to come across this



It consists of someone chanting parts of the Hundred Thousand Songs in Tibetan, followed by someone presenting a translation in English, in a lovely American accent, I can't identify where but I imagine south. He sounds a bit like Jethro  in the Beverly Hillbillies.

All this set to . . , you've guessed it . . . a drone.

It's very good, great fun! Not unlike an old style BBC radio 4 Sunday afternoon programme - better than most. Recommended.

I just ordered this.
Listened to excerpts on Youtube and to my surprise enjoyed the Robert Ashley narrative passages. I have some other recordings of Buddhist chant, both Sanskrit and Tibetan.
And I'm an Ashley fan, just finished reading Gann's RA biography this week.

T. D.

Noticed something weird about the Songs of Milarepa recording.
In a couple of places, English speaker Robert Ashley slips up/mispronounces words and has to repeat them. I find it extremely odd that they didn't record alternate takes or insert edits. [For all I know, the same thing could have happened with the Tibetan part.]