“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Thursday, March 3, 2011

Pierre Henry: Slices of Breath


Read full review of Jouet Electronique / Elemental 1 - Eliane Radigue on Boomkat.com ©


Talking online with the excellent David Reid, friend of Keith Rowe, I found out that there was one piece of Eliane Radigue's that I don't have yet, a reissue of Elemental 1. Strangely I found this out while listening to Pierre Henry's piece Le Voyage, based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Radigue composed Elemental 1 at his studio while working on his stuff.

Again, what is it that just knocks the socks off of most electronic music about musique concrète? It's the approach to sounds as objects translated by the media in which they appear. It's the huge configuration space in which this music sits, surely including electronic music but going beyond it.

I highly highly recommend Pierre Henry's work. Le Voyage is very much mostly slices of breath and feedback.

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