Eliane Radigue - Geelriandre - Arthesis (Fringe Recordings, 2003)

1 Geelriandre 29:59
2 Arthesis 25:46

Pianist Gérard Fremy, in his liner notes - in French only, so you'd better invest in a good dictionary - recalls the story of the world premiere of Eliane Radigue's "Adnos" in the Musée Galliera, Paris, on November 10th 1974, an event at which all the important music journalists of the time were present, and not one of them wrote about. A kind of anti-Rite of Spring, if you like. Fremy seems somewhat baffled at the (non) reaction, but it seems clear that the reason for their silence was that they were confronted by a music that was literally decades ahead of its time. Back in the early seventies the first musicians who worked with ARP and Moog synthesizers were more interested in sci-fi bloops and swoops, but Radigue was one of the few composers (perhaps even the only composer) who recognised and exploited its potential for extremely slow transitions of pitch and timbre. Though she'd long been associated with the French musique concrète establishment through her work with Pierre Henry, her music revealed no apparent interest in Schaefferian solfège or the jump / cut aesthetic of standard slice'n'dice electronic music. Filing her away in the minimalism drawer might be inevitable, given her long association with various American institutions and enthusiastic champions of her music such as Phill Niblock, but the mystery and magic of Radigue's music occupies a twilight zone of minimalism between the static drone world of Young, Conrad and Niblock and the gradual process aesthetic of Reich and Glass. With the former, we're presented with great blocks of sound that occupy the listening space, redefining our perceptions of its architecture - the music itself is unchanging (until the often abrupt transition to the next drone), but we are free to explore its inner nuances; with the latter, once the process is set up and loaded, to quote Reich, it's more a question of following its gradual development, as musical material changes either incrementally (Glass's linear additive and Reich's later block additive processes) or at a regular rate (Reich's phase pieces). Radigue's elusive music sits squarely between the two perceptual worlds - it is forever on the move, albeit very slowly (try loading one of her pieces into some music software and speeding it up fivefold, and you'll be surprised), but constructed so meticulously that it somehow slips out of time: change is perceived as having taken place rather than taking place. However many times you listen - and this is music you will return to on many occasions - you'll probably never quite figure out how she did it.
The release (at last!) of these two works dating from 1972 and 1973 is another major event in the (re)discovery of Radigue's music, after Table Of The Elements' landmark triple CD issue of "Adnos" last year. "Geelriandre" features Fremy on piano, gently inserting beautifully poised sonorities into Radigue's seamless textures - John Tilbury's work with AMM comes inevitably to mind. Originally premiered in Paris in 1972, this particular recording was made in Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum seven years later, and a few distant Dutch hacking coughs unfortunately manage to make themselves heard. "Arthesis", realised on a Moog synthesizer during Radigue's residency at the University of Iowa in 1973, is heard here in a recording of its world premiere in Los Angeles' Theatre Vanguard that year. It's utterly useless to describe either of these works: they simply must be heard to be believed. French musician and Metamkine label boss Jérôme Noetinger, who released Radigue's "Biogenesis" on his Cinéma Pour L'Oreille Collection a while back, has indicated that there remain several other pieces her early 1970s music that have so far not been released. It surely is only a matter of time: the world might not have been ready for "Adnos" in 1974, but thirty years later, Eliane Radigue's time has come. Anyone who seriously claims to be interested in new music simply cannot afford to pass this by.
Dan Warburton, Paris Transatlantic

In 2003, the small Italian label fringes, which had specialized in recordings of music on the farther edges of contemporary electro-acoustic improvisation, released the first disc on its archival sub-label: two earl- 70's performances by minimalist pioneer Eliane Radigue. It might seem an odd choice, but Radigue's steady-state, pulse and drone oriented works for synthesizer had cast a wider and wider influence over younger improvisers over the years, especially those concerned with the layering of extended tones and the unanticipated patterns that emerge. "Geelriandre," from 1972, created on the ARP synthesizer, begins with muffled bell tones nestled inside a drone that's just this side of harsh. Small sounds are added or removed over the piece's half-hour length, not through any strict system but rather intuitively, stressing the subtle placement of the notes within the drone-space, their sonic ripples the aural equivalent of pebbles tossed into a stream. At times, in its subtle complexity, the work comes very close to the sort of atmosphere generated by late AMM. It ends having, in one sense, traversed only scant territory; in another having opened huge vistas to explore. "Arthesis", performed the following year on a Moog synthesizer, largely dispenses with the personal flourishes and invests heavily in the essence of the drone itself, here a throbbing weave in which a given strand will occasionally rise to the surface and inevitably be subsumed, giving way to another. Choices are, of course, still being made by Radigue, but the overall effect is of experiencing some vast process of, for instance, leaning against the housing of an enormous generator, feeling its sounds and physical vibrations as one. It's ear-opening, invigorating music. Listeners who enjoy the work of practitioners such as Keith Rowe and Toshimaru Nakamura will be delighted at this possible antecedent.
Brian Olewnick, All Music

seems to be sold out visit Eliane Radigue (here or here)

try

Eliane Radigue - Adnos I-III (Table Of The Elements, 2002)

1 Adnos I 71:26
2 Adnos II 72:44
3 Adnos III 72:40


There is a lot to say about listening. If you pay close enough attention to any sounds, you can hear a lot of things that you would probably ignore otherwise. That goes for rock music, birds chirping, people talking and anything else that makes noise. Different noises suggest different ways of listening, but deep listening can easily be applied to any particular set of sounds.

Table of the Elements has recently released Eliane Radigue’s Adnos I-III in a very handsomely packaged triple compact disc set. Radigue created these three pieces between 1973 and 1981 by meticulously mixing together sounds from an ARP synthesizer on tape. Each piece took over a year to complete, necessitating immense precision in live mixing and planning. Radigue studied under Pierre Henry and exhibits remarkable skill in her techniques. Despite the impressive methods employed here, however, the process by which the pieces were created is really only important to the extent that it succeeds in its effects. Radigue’s music shouldn’t be interpreted as some sort of academic exercise in minimalism, but rather as simply the kind of music that she is innately compelled to make. That distinction applies pretty generally to art, considering technique and form as tools separate from distinction. The Adnos cycle, though, would be equally compelling as a solo vocal piece or any other medium aside from Radigue’s format.

Each piece is a little over 70 minutes in length and is based around gradually changing drones, generally happening separately in three distinct frequency ranges. The highest and lowest of these are at each end of the audible spectrum. The high end resembles tape hiss, barely perceptible at first listen, but sort of abrasive after a few minutes. The opposite end is a gently throbbing continuous booming sound that rattles your whole body, but gives a rather motherly feeling of warmth. In general, the music subtly becomes a part of your environment in such a way that you forget what it’s like without it, and pressing the pause button makes you perceive the relative silence much differently than before.

Across the cycle, an increasingly complex rhythmic element emerges. This begins in Adnos I with the low pulsing sound of sine waves slightly out of phase with each other. In the second piece, this becomes more elaborate, and a structured cadence emerges. Adnos III features rapidly syncopated tones somewhere between ticking and chiming that imply a much quicker tempo than the other elements of the piece. Throughout all three pieces, the sounds are very active. There’s a feeling of stasis to Radigue’s music, in which rapid motion exists, but without any clear direction.

The Adnos cycle offers ample opportunities for expanding one’s listening dexterity and bounteous rewards for those who are willing to engage the work. Like most drone-based music (or really any sound), there a deceptive amount of stuff going on that one might miss at first. Because of its minimalist nature, the listener is forced to tune into finer aspects of the sounds and continuously discover more minute characteristics. Most of the tones that Radigue employs are what some would refer to as pure. In some sense, they’re machine-like and artificial since she uses rather artificial methods to achieve them. Radigue succeeds immensely, however, in bringing out their fundamental character, making the pieces seem natural if abstract, and more than anything else, comfortable.

I don’t mean that her music is what one would call difficult listening. All of the noises that Radigue employs are both profoundly beautiful and immensely powerful. It’s pretty difficult for me to have much perspective on the way in which these would be perceived by a casual listener, but I don’t imagine that anyone would be able to dismiss them as unlistenable or displeasing. Patience is the only difficult challenge that the Adnos cycle poses. Change is inevitably very important to any way of listening; sounds are nothing but vibrating air. In these pieces, however, any changes are extremely gradual, making any attempt to directly perceive them virtually impossible. This forces one’s attention toward sonic qualities at a specific moment rather than change over time.

In the liner notes, Rhys Chatham provides an essay that is so illuminating that it makes saying any additional things about Radigue’s work a forbidding endeavor. He explains that “adnos” is a play on Latin words that can be taken to mean “to go towards unity.” This is quite an appropriate description of the way in which the pieces present themselves as whole entities. Since the changes that occur are slow and smooth to practically imperceptible, the listener is forced to take in each piece as a whole and listen to it as one long sound. Thinking about the sound at a certain point, it’s hard to tell where you are or how you got there. This causes the entire piece to become unified without clearly understandable causal relations between its parts. In fact, there are no clearly distinct parts. Each piece is meant to be heard in its entirety, and any smaller part lacks the force of the whole.

Meditation is strongly connected to the Adnos pieces, as is Radigue’s later work. Interestingly, she was inexperienced in meditation when she composed Adnos I. She became interested in Tibetan Buddhism after the piece was identified by some listeners as “meditation music,” dedicating three years to its study between the composition of Adnos I and Adnos II. Likewise, listening to the pieces draws you into a sort of meditative situation without any attempt on your part to get there. You need only to allow yourself to be receptive and pay attention to the sounds to find yourself becoming calmer and more aware of your surroundings. That might seem a little bit too trite or suggestive of mysticism, but regardless of your attitude toward meditation, it accurately connotes the manner in which the music affects you as a listener. You can interpret the works in variety of different ways, but there's a sensual effect common to any kind of listening to Eliane Radigue's music. The music gently influences your thoughts, becoming a natural part of your environment. It’s a good place to be.
Dusted Review

sold out visit Eliane Radigue (here or here) & Table Of The Elements

try disc 1
try disc 2
try disc 3

Eliane Radigue - Σ = a = b = a + b (Povertech Industries, 1969 (2000 reissue))

1 Untitled
2 Untitled
3 Untitled
4 Untitled

sold out

try