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"You don't have to call it music if the term shocks you. *
It is under this quote from John Cage, full of meaning (as always), that we have gathered for this second episode devoted to vinyl covers five records with strange and intriguing music, all of them innovative in their time - and still today.
The characteristic of the LP enthusiast is that he is as much attracted by the music as by the act of choosing it, of holding his vinyl in his hands and of constantly seeking optimal sound quality. His curiosity leads him to be interested in certain music only because the cover attracts him: a colour, a face, a painting can do much to arouse interest. Vinyl lovers, here are five sound adventurers who have taken particular care to disseminate their music as much through the recording as through the score, and whose choice of cover can say a lot about their art.
Let's talk about exploratory art in order to satisfy music lovers and to evacuate any often frustrating semantic debate. The label is stuck. Apart from that, what do Charlemagne Palestine, Alain Kremski, Luc Ferrari, Sofia Goubaïdulina and Dick Hyman have in common if not being of our time and having used up their lives constantly searching for the confines of sound.
theeOorgannnissstheeGgreattestttSsynthesizerrrEverrrrrrrr is a record by the American maximalist musician (performer/plastician/carillonneur) Charlemagne Palestine released in 2020 on the Meakusma label. It is a unique performance on the organ of the Church of Peace in Eupen, Belgium. It contains everything that makes Charlemagne Palestine's art: notes held like a drone, the voice of Charlemagne Palestine himself that oscillates between the nostalgic mystic and the underground comic, dissonant harmonies that waver and oscillate without ever being resolved, but above all a captivating sound atmosphere that in a few seconds grabs us and transports us for more than half an hour. Everything turns into a huge spiritual vibration and, looking at the photos of the audience in the beautiful booklet, we think that on this day, his famous quest for the "golden sound" must have been achieved. The cover of this record reminds us of the yellow of this much sought-after gold, with its signature habit of doubling, tripling and quadrupling most of its letters.
Three letters (ANS) to define a Russian synthesizer with an unusual - almost unreal - and more than utopian sound universe, paying homage to the synesthetic composer Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin, from whom the acronymic name is inspired. Yevgeny Murzin had the idea of this synthesizer in 1938 but it took more than twenty years to realize it. Its principle is quite simple but its application is more than complex: this instrument allows photoelectric recording and transforms any image drawn on a plate into a series of elaborate sounds. The plates can be used over and over again. This instrument was made famous (proportionately) by the composer Edward Artemiev of several Tarkovsky film scores. The great composer Sofia Gubaidulina uses this large-scale instrument for an incredible piece: Vivente-Non Vivente on a record released in 1990 by Melodiya. Set alongside two other great works, this is certainly the composer's least known and yet the most innovative in terms of sound. It is difficult to imagine music that is more terrifying, anguished and mysterious. Percussive sounds that give way to industrial sounds, almost human voices like a dislocated Russian choir, diabolical repetitive laughter, engine noises, bells, a woman's voice exhaling, etc.: an uneasiness rarely achieved by the composer. A rarely achieved uneasiness that the cover didn't let you guess. We don't dare to imagine the composer's drawing on the glass plate...
Five symmetrical shadows on a grey background to illustrate the multi-faceted music of Luc Ferrari. The harpist Hélène Breschand - with theEnsemble Laborintus - has been interested for many years in the fascinating figure of Luc Ferrari with whom she has had the opportunity to work. She devotes a large place to him in her repertoire, which is itself vast and eclectic. She is also a great interpreter of the work of Éliane Radigue. Luc Ferrari, who died in 2005, never fully entered the purgatory of musicians, but neither did he ever enter the doors of the great concert halls, and that is a great pity, for he was to some extent to France what John Cage was to the United States in his time: a protean precursor of genius. This former student of Cortot and Messiaen, who co-founded the GRM (Groupe de recherches musicales), is a pioneer of concrete and experimental music who knew how to forge a very personal - but contemporary - and socially committed language. This double disc called ...Et Après (published by Alga Marghen) also brings together pieces by clarinettist and composer Sylvain Kassap (a tribute piece to the composer) and by Hélène Breschand herself. Several works originally for piano have been adapted for harp - with Ferrari's approval - and give us an anthology version of the magnificent À la recherche du rythme perdu. This compilation - or rather collection of small pieces , to use the title of one of Luc Ferrari's most interesting works - is an ideal way to approach a new facet of this composer's rich production.
A serious face, behind bells and thick glasses, calls out to us: it is that ofAlain Kremski, a French composer and pianist whose disappearance has unfortunately not allowed the general public to rediscover him and musicians to reassess his historical importance. The time for his rediscovery has not yet come, but a record could help: Musique pour un Temple inconnu was released in 1978 on the prestigious Auvidis label. A Grand Prix de Rome winner at the age of 22, Alain Kremski was as much admired by Nadia Boulanger and Aaron Copland as by Olivier Messiaen and Igor Stravinsky. His attraction to Buddhist spirituality, the music of Gurdjieff and Nietzsche led him on a path far from the contemporary music circles of his time. Music for an unknown Temple is a four-movement work for ancient Iranian bells, gongs and Tibetan cymbals, all played by Kremski himself in a huge improvisation or spontaneous composition. According to Kremski, this music is an opportunity to " bring the listener to a sense of peace, serenity, and mental tranquility, while at the same time making him or her vibrate internally in a very active way. Between ambient naturalism, meditative music andArvo Pärt's tintinnabulis, it is time to consider Alain Kremski's music as an important part of minimalist music in France.
At 95 years old Dick Hyman is the last living musician to have played with Charlie Parker. He is the living memory of jazz - in all styles. His numerous recordings as a jazzman (over 250), his pedagogical works, his original compositions mixing jazz and classical, his famous "in the manner of" great jazzmen, his film scores (Woody Allen), his lectures on the origins of ragtime and boogie-woogie and his marked attraction to the nascent synthesizer in the 1960s make Dick Hyman an incredible chameleon and therefore an unknown. He is, however, one of the great precursors and popularisers of the Moog synthesizer. He has released several records devoted to this new instrument that is so difficult to master. He blithely mixed jazz, pop and classical influences while trying to integrate contemporary atmospheres that were not too old-fashioned - which is a challenge when talking about the Moog synthesizer. The Age of Electronicus was released in 1969 by Command and was a minor success. The album contains several tracks that are covers of pop hits of the time (Beatles, Joni Mitchell, James Brown, Hair) all played with sounds that explore the (sometimes comical) possibilities of the Moog but one track stands out and deserves a review of its own: Kolumbo . An original composition by Dick Hyman, this seven-minute-long track explores sounds that plunge us into the synthesizer itself, into its meandering wires, into its repetitive stridency that heralds techno or electro with a haunting industrial rhythm sampled and taken up many decades later by a certain Kanye West in God Level.
François Mardirossian
