Description:	Exciting 180g LP on Doxy
	Format:	LP (vinyl)
	Genre(s):	Avant Garde / Sound Art
	Label:	Doxy
	Price:	£14.89
	Availability:	Dispatched within 2-5 days (on average).

5
...according to our Brett on 25 June 2009.

Hey friends, fancy some seminal avant-garde dicking about? Then you're in luck because Doxy (which, as far as I can gather from Google, is the great saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins' label) have issued a pair of fine musique concrete LPs that'd otherwise cost you about a million pounds to obtain. Proper public service shit and I doff my beret to them. Symphonie Pour Une Homme Seul/Concert des Ambiguites marked some of the first excursions into the 'style' by Pierres Henry and Schaeffer and feature all manner of sonic experimentation from manipulated field recordings to primitive experimental noise, sampling, pure environmental soundscapes, tape manipulations, sonic montage and occasionally even straight instrumental passages (particularly piano). Le Micophone Bien Tempere, by Henry alone, features what was apparently his first attempt to focus these elements into a notated piece. What's remarkable is that these lads were pretty much the first to do most this kind of shit so as a document the two LPs are totally invaluable but it's only fair to warn you that it is pure sound experimentation and as such doesn't feature much in the way of melody or party bangers.. You'll know if this sort of thing floats your boat and if it does you'll be well chuffed with these high quality vinyls!

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What their label says...

Electronic / avant-garde music pioneer and founder of the French musique concrète movement, Pierre Schaeffer, a radio engineer, believed that any sound could be music, and was one of the first to experiment with tape looping, splicing and sampling. He was also one of the first to record music on magnetic tape. Drawing inspiration from the Italian Futurists, he emphasized the double meaning of the word “play”, meaning to play an instrument, but also to have fun and enjoy oneself.Pierre Henry, a classically trained musician, was one of Schaeffer's disciples and together they co-wrote the revolutionary Symphonie pour un Homme Seul, recorded in 1950. Despite its title, it is not a symphony in the classical sense, but a kind of suite divided into 12 movements. It is a musical collage featuring vocal fragments, that are at times recorded backwards, accelerated or repeated, and other sounds like whistles, footsteps, doors slamming, metallic sounds, and a prepared piano. However, what is important about this piece is not merely its intrinsic musical value, but its influence on so many future generations of musicians in so many genres. Symphonie pour un Homme Seul, over half a century later, remains a pioneering experiment in the search for new aural horizons. The Concerto side reveals Henry's personal approach to dissonance, with a strong impact of illogical sequences in the piano “duel”: the two instruments seem to collide in a furious rejection of the traditional idea of music, generating a clash of noises that reproduces the sonic pollution of the modern times.

Track listing - Side A: - 12 mouvements: Prosopopée I - Partita - Valse - Erotica - Scherzo - Collectif - Prosopopée II - Eroica - Apostrophe - Intermezzo - Cadence – Strette Side B: - 8 mouvements: Tendu - Epars - Diffus - Concis - Intermède - Cadence - Etendu - Rassemblé