Who’s Afraid of Iannis Xenakis?It was released last September but I’ve only just read about it in the February issue of Uncut. Marchment takes samples from electronic pioneers like Xenakis and Edgard Varèse, as well as from the work of Delia Derbyshire of the legendary BBC Radiophonic Workshop (she created the Dr Who theme), and reworks them in new contexts.
Pretty radical – but it, or something like it, has been done before. In 2002 the San Francisco-based label Asphodel released a new edition of Persepholis, an hour-long electronic piece by Xenakis from 1971, with a second CD of remixes of sections from it by Japanese, Polish, German, Spanish and American musicians. Some of the resulting pieces are pretty; some are pretty wild, music for people who find Stockhausen too tame. The whole set is available at eMusic.
7 comments:
But does it swing?
Totally not, dude. But it rocks.
Well I've been giving it a test listen (we few, we lucky few with our emusic accounts grandfathered before the territorial evil) and I'd say it hums.
Oh come on. It rolls, at least.
'Hums' is good! Occasionally it roars quite frighteningly. But 'rocks' and 'rolls' imply entirely the wrong kind of movement, don't you think?
Slithers?
Slithers is good. But I have to confess some of the big noises caused such a physical sensation of fear (which is no doubt the intention) I had to take it off and put Evan Christopher's new trad clarinet CD (also from emusic) on as an antidote.
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