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MARCHETTI, LIONEL - La grande vallee / Micro-climat

Format: LP Label & Cat.Number: RECOLLECTION GRM REGRM 026LP Release Year: 2021 Note: two main pieces (1990-1995) by the still underrated French composer, who often creates intense and almost ritualistic musique concrete with a strong surrealistic / dreamy atmosphere, for the first time on vinyl - "Micro-Climat" was born out of his fascinations for clouds, "La grande vallee" has a strong narrative character, the listener is set into constant motion... - absolut high-class audio art and "cinema for the ears" ! Price (incl. 19% VAT): €20.00 More Info "I wonder if my fascination for clouds (without being an obsession) may have risen at the end of the '80s as, whilst composing 'Micro-climat', I would regularly wander between the Vercors mountains and the high plateaus of the Monts du Forez discovering, through my eyes, body, breath, active observation and walk, that natural forms when constantly changing and yet swollen with a unity of matter (in this instance, water) open one up to a deep, fundamental breath and a clear field for the mind. The sky and its forces: our ally. A model for a natural music which, although fixed, as in musique concrète (a rule of the genre), moreover on a recording tape, will remain charged with such a poetic quality that (isn't it its role or rather its reality?) it will ensure a perpetual renewal for our senses, so as to reach another idea of the world, far more open and richer than what we could have imagined." --Lionel Marchetti, 2011. "Lionel Marchetti is a major figure of the 'third generation' of concrète musicians, a term he values. Listening to these works, imbued with poetry and traversed by micro-narratives, one can indeed retrieve the original concrète spirit, the one that draws from the sonic world, with ears wide open, so as to extract a fertile, rich and multiple substance then shaped and conveyed towards a formal and musical abstraction. Lionel Marchetti has mastered this process, but his real distinctive feature is a truly unique talent for setting climates (as one sets traps) and keeping us on constant alert. The two pieces in this record perfectly illustrate the entrancing dimension of Lionel Marchetti's music, whose charm leads us, through each successive listening, to become voluntary captives so as to better liberate ourselves." --François Bonnet, Paris, 2020. "La grande vallée": Musical composition, design and sound production carried out at the INA grm Studios (Paris) in 1993/95; Original audio recordings in the Drôme and the Mont Ventoux areas "Micro-climat" is the first movement of the Sirrus cycle (Micro-climat, Passerelle, Sirrus) composed in 1989/90; Musical composition, sound design and production, audio recordings in 1989/90 at the CFMI studios in Lyon (Lumière University, Lyon 2). Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi; Cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnittstelle, Berlin, November 2020; Translations: Valérie Vivancos; Layout: Stephen O'Malley. https://lionelmarchetti.bandcamp.com/album/la-grande-vall-e-micro-climat "A long-standing member of Groupe De Recherches Musicales, the French composer, Lionel Marchetti, is one of the great contemporary exponents of musique concrète and acousmatic playback, having worked in the idioms since the late 1980s - producing dozens of solo and collaborative releases - and written extensively on the subjects. He is regarded as among the most important figures within the idiom’s third wave. Recollection GRM’s LP, La grande vallee / Micro-climat, dives back toward the earliest days of the composer’s catalog of works. The album’s first side comprises the work La grande vallee, which was created at GRM between 1993 and 1995, before its original release in 1998 as part of Metamkine’s legendary Cinéma Pour L'Oreille series. Drawing on a vast range of recordings from diverse sources - many taken from the natural world - over the works’ 20+ minutes, Marchetti weaves a startlingly imagistic and hauntingly musical tapestry of sonority. Shadows of ambience rise and fall amongst long tones and bristling textures, sculpting a space to be occupied fully, and where the boundaries between obscurity, clarity, and abstraction fade within expanses of brilliantly balanced organisations of sound. The entire second side is given over to an earlier work, Micro-climat, created by Marchetti in 1989 and 1990 at the CFMI studios in Lyon, but remaining unreleased until 2001, when it appeared on his CD only release, Sirrus, issued by Auscultare Research. While radically different and arguably more explicitly experimental in its material presence than La grande vallee, the work similarly speaks from Marchetti’s intimate relationship with the natural world, drawing much of its inspiration and source material from his wanderings during this period in the Vercors mountains and Monts du Forez in the south of France. Building on heavily processed tones and textures that dance with interspersed environment sounds - locatable and unplaceable - the work’s engrossing structures pulse with energy in a careful balance between pure abstraction and the ephemeral trace. Largely unknown outside of France and a small number of devoted fans of experimental electronic practice, Recollection GRM’s LP, La grande vallee / Micro-climat, presents Lionel Marchetti as a crucial and welcome voice in late 20th and 21st century musique concrète. A deeply poetic channeling of the natural world through rigorously experiential techniques, with its two works appearing for the first time ever on vinyl, it’s a vibrant and engrossing listen from start to finish that shouldn’t be missed. Like all things from the label, it’s bound to go fast so grab it while you can." [Soundohm]