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ELOY, JEAN-CLAUDE - Shanti

Format: do-CD Label & Cat.Number: Hors Territoires HT 05-6 Release Year: 2009 Note: early drone / experimental meditation piece, from 1972/1973, for electronic and concrete sounds, created at Electronic Music Studio, WDR, Cologne. Digitalized & revised version 2001 - ".. let us say that Shânti belongs to those very rare works that change you after listening to them. You are not exactly the same before and after." [Gérard Mannoni] BACK IN stock Price (incl. 19% VAT): €25.00 More Info " “Shânti” (1972-73) for electronic and concrete sounds. Electronic music studio, WDR, Cologne, Germany, 1972-73. Digitalized and revised version from 2001. “The term “meditation music” triggered many conflicting comments including positive ones (“... let us say that Shânti belongs to those very rare works that change you after listening to them. You are not exactly the same before and after.” - Gérard Mannoni, Le Quotidien de Paris, 1974). Others, wondering at the strong sound presence of the piece, consider such aspect as hardly helpful to their own meditation... Let us be clear: “what meditates” here (”that” who meditates) is the composer. He is the one who takes you on his journey and guides you through his work like in a classic or romantic symphony. As a listener you are invited to follow “his” meditation... The composition is the meditation.” " [label info] "Was I recently 'complaining' about 3CD sets with music of people I never heard of, I wasn't perhaps thinking of Jean-Claude Eloy. First time around the mailman decided to keep the CDs, but the second time delivered them duly. I hope he likes them as much as I do. I may have heard the name Eloy before, but not his music, or where to place him, these two sets, six discs in total will set the record straight (pun intended). Eloy was born in 1938 and studied with Darius Milhaud. I believe he composes all sorts of work, but his main line of business is electronic music. I review them in order of composition. 'Shanti', which means 'peace', was composed after 'Kamakala' for three orchestra ensembles, five choir ensembles with three conductors, so it was perhaps 'necessary' to compose an electro-acoustic work at the WDR studios in Cologne, Germany. A work of meditation, or so Eloy tells us. Now this is not a work of pure and solitary drone music, as one would perhaps expect from 'meditative music'. They are here, that's for sure, but there is also an interview with Aurobindo and Mao, as well as a small piece called 'Soldats', with soldiers speaking and 'Vagues Lentes, Boucles De Feux', which takes their singing into an electronic landscape. This is of course an album about 'Peace', but rather then just produce a drone or two, Eloy brings in a political element, the soldiers. However the majority are those various drones, played on those ancient machines (great pictures in the booklet here), the mystical oscillators, wave generators and such like - which defy any laptop, I'd say. Excellent music, although not always exactly as meditative as promised, but that, I thought, was hardly a problem. Unsettling meditation, which is better than just go with the flow." [FdW/Vital Weekly]