Early ElectroMIX is a series to document the history of experimental Electronic music from the 50s to the 80s, composers making use of electronic instruments, test equipment, generators of synthetic signals and sounds… to analog synthesizers…While our sessions document those who make it today my desire is to transmit some pioneering works which paved the way to what we try to create today.
Realizing that most of those seminal recordings were not available I decided to archive them in a contemporary way, DJing-mixing them and while most of the time running several sources together or in medleys I made sure to respect the original intent of each composers as I want to transmit their message rather than mine.
The only one I would dare deliver being that they should not be forgotten…
Philippe Petit / April 2021.
Recorded (on (March 18/2021) for our series broadcasted on Modular-Station
https://modular-station.com
Tracklist:
Bernard Parmegiani – Du Pop à l’âne (1969) 00:00 > 10:10
Riccardo Allorto – Galassia 515 (1972) 09:18 > 12:11
Alfaluna – Pianeti del Mistero (1988)11:28 > 15:14
Josef Otto Mundigl – Interludium (1975) 14:08 > 17:22
Morton Subotnick – Until Spring (1976) 16:45 > 31:06
Warner Jepson – Bugs At Large (1972) 30:04 > 32:43
Pauline Oliveros – Beautiful Soop (1966) 32:40 > 48:27
Bogusław Schaeffer – Electronic Preludes (1968) 48:08 > 59:58
Bernard Parmegiani – Du Pop à l’âne (1969 / INA-GRM)
My favorite French composer envisioned this piece like a « collage » encounters between music of very contrasting and unexpected styles. « Pop” music superimposed on symphonic music, and many other forms of assemblage. The title is itself a collage composed from the French expression: « Passer du coq à l’âne”, that is to say to go from one subject to another without transition.
Riccardo Allorto – Galassia 515 (1972 / Angelicum)
Killer futuristic electronica with proto techno drones / loops + alien bleeps, Analog sci fi soundscapes by this little known composer from Italy creatively mixing industrial / menacing and atmospheric themes.
Alfaluna – Pianeti del Mistero (1988/ Contempo Records)
Let’s stay in space listening to one of the most obscure from the sought after Italian library, originally conceived in the early eighties as a soundtrack for TV specials about space, aliens and other thrills…
Josef Otto Mundigl – Interludium (1975 / Internationales Musikstudio)
From the sole & only album by the german avant garde electronic master Mundigl phenomenal electronics with lots of EMS Synthi.
Morton Subotnick – Until Spring (1976 / Odyssey)
The legendary American composer is interested in sculpting with sounds in time and space, placing sounds into an imaginary space canvas, molding the color of a sound, transforming its harmonic content, to begin to shape it like the beginnings of some strange visceral language… My favorite album from my favorite living composer + the one who turned me on to Buchla !
I have already written a lot about him in « ElectroMIX » 1 + 8 + 19 and anything else would appear in his official pages:
http://www.mortonsubotnick.com/bio.html
Warner Jepson – Bugs At Large (1972 / Melon Expander)
Werner Jepson was also from San Francisco & playing the Buchla 100 + magnetic tape. This track was recorded at the San Francisco Tape Music Center where he worked with some of the most prominent musicians and artists of the Bay area throughout the mid-1960s and 1970s (e.g., Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, and Yvonne Rainer). Jepson was also one of the first musicians to ever use the Buchla 100 modular synthesizer when Don Buchla first revealed the prototype for his famous “Buchla Box”…
Pauline Oliveros – Beautiful Soop (1966 / Pogus)
Let’s close our « Buchla trilogy » with Pauline Oliveros who completed Beautiful Soop in 1966 utilizing the original Buchla Box 100 series created for the Tape Music Center by Don Buchla and her tape delay system.
“I was deeply impressed by the sounds from the frog pond outside the studio window at Mills. I loved the accompaniment as I worked on my pieces. Though I never recorded the frogs I was of course influenced by their music.”
Bogusław Schaeffer – Electronic Preludes (1968 / Bölt)
Boguslaw Schaeffer was a prominent representative of the postwar avant-garde, not only in the domain of music, but also as far as literature, theatre and plastic arts are concerned. Among the composer’s enormous output of over 600 works some favorites were created in the Polish Radio Experimental Studio in Warsaw.
His compositions are milestones in musique concrete and Elektronische Musik, and to define what the Studio meant to him he said:
“It served as a workshop of very interesting composer’s work, as – despite its name: the Experimental Studio – it was not a place for experiments, but for creation.”
