Browse by Artist: PARMEGIANI, BERNARD

Artist:	PARMEGIANI, BERNARD
Title:	Violostries
Label:	INA GRM (FRANCE)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$36.00
Catalog #:	INA 1012/13

Finally reissued, with new artwork; this has been the most in-demand electroacoustic CD for the past few years. Parmegiani is one the electroacoustic superstars of the INA GRM universe, and along with various Bayle titles this is a great place to start with the label. This amazing double CD is broken up into 2 parts: the first disc consists of old-style tape-splicing electroacoustic material, dating from 1963 to 1976 ("Violostries," "Pour en Finir avec le Pourvoir d'Orphee" & "Dedans-Dehors"). The 2nd disc represents post-computer acousmatic music, with works from 1986 to 1991 ("Rouge-Mort:" "Thanatos," "Exercisme 3" & "Le Present Compose"). All are thoroughly soaked with the intuitive power of brain-scanning sonic properties, tones fade and explode with stunning neuronic intensity. "Exercisme 3" features "a sort of interface enabling natural sounds or analogical synthetic sounds to release digitally synthesized sounds. Such and such a series of impulsions releases virtually aleatoric, and sometimes very varied, repetitions of digital sounds. These repetitions are often very 'dense' and take us to the limits of continual sound phenomena, thus making these 'factory sounds' lose their instrumental 'soul.' Thus, we suddenly swing from one domain to another, from the instrumental to the electroacoustic, from a language we understand, to an 'unknown language.'"

Artist:	PARMEGIANI, BERNARD
Title:	La Mémoire Des Sons
Label:	INA GRM (FRANCE)
Format:	CD
Price:	$22.00
Catalog #:	INA 2019

AKA The Memory of Sounds. Features 3 works: "Capture Éphémère" (1967); "Sons-jeu" (1987); "La Mémoire des Sons" (2001). "Excepting some rare mixed pieces, Paremegiani's works as a whole take the form of music for 'fixedsounds', coming within the scope of the immense repertoire of electro-acoustic music. From his training in the art of mime and his experience as a sound engineer, Parmegiani has retained a taste for a hand-to-hand approach (sound/embodiment, as we could be tempted to say) with various sound mate-rials which he has developed throughout markedly diverse works." RE: "Capture Éphémère": "The beating of terror-stricken wings, gliding ascents, rockets, dull explosions: the fission of the fine powder of the sound is then recovered, in layers of 'captured', beating time: impossible stases of reso-nance ('fleeting' by their very nature ...) which however persist, beating out their miraculous cohesion: a magical effect even today: proof that it is not due to technique. Or: a sequence of utter loss, waste: an accumulation as Schaeffer would have said ('reiteration abounding in brief elements'; 'like a shower of stones dispersing'...), having the fluidity of a waterfall, with one hundred thousand elements interwoven in discontinuity, 'eccentric', generous, suffocating... Or: this furious vibration, which in its steep ascent, is imbued with a triumphant appearance of tireless virtuosity... And so many intimately interwoven composite sequences, as they advance, hurtling through space (and the Russian mountains ...) with seemingly inexhaustible energy; and marked several times, just before a silence, by the same small elegant asterisk. However, all of this (deafening volubility) is finally calmed by a short coda: where a movement to reduce and rarefy particles splits this mass in extremis into an ethereal shower of sparks, having the effect of a prolonged pause." -- Jean-Christophe Thomas.

Artist:	PARMEGIANI, BERNARD
Title:	L'eil ecoute
Label:	INA GRM (FRANCE)
Format:	CD
Price:	$22.00
Catalog #:	INA 2026

New 2004 Parmegiani release, featuring: "L'oeil Ecoute" (1970), "La Roue Ferris" (1971), "Especes d'espace" (2002-2003). "Excepting some mixed pieces, his work as a whole takes the form of music for 'fixed sound', coming within the scope of the immense repertoire of electro-acoustic music. In 1971, he made a video film based on the music in 'L'Oeil ecoute', featuring visual imagery processed through a synthesizer. We only need listen to the opening of 'L'Oeil ecoute', a sustained swirl and flurry, emerging as a wave about to break, which we only just manage to glimpse at its approach, just like this train which we take a full speed, surging forward headlong at the opening of the piece. At the very outset, on the one hand, everything is given in a single act, the music is already moving forward; and on the other, the ghostly realm into which it takes us is already amply filled out. We note that the large arbitrary breaks in tone Parmegiani achieves in 'L'Oeil ecoute' and indeed throughout all his musical compositions, arise as searching encounters. As such, they are gestures deriving from the sculptor himself. The blocks used are very imposing and the matter extremely dense..."

Artist:	PARMEGIANI, BERNARD
Title:	Plain-Temps
Label:	INA GRM (FRANCE)
Format:	CD
Price:	$22.00
Catalog #:	INA 2027

2006 release, presenting 3 versions of "Plain-Temps". Classic new work from the most important INA GRM composer. The first part of the suite, "Le Present Compose" is from 1991, recorded here in 2006. "The second part is "Entre-Temps" from 1992. "The gradual slowing down of the tick-tock sound of a penduluum with which the this piece opens provides us with not only the most symbolic but also the most illusory image of the passing of time. This is followed by by a constantly changing continuum, apparently homogenous and harmonious yet ultimately fragile. In the ever wider intervals that open up between these carefully-timed happenings, soundscapes appear. These resemble certain image-memories of everyday events, some close, some distant." -- Parmegiani. Part three is "Plain Temps", from 1993, recorded in 2006.

Artist:	PARMEGIANI, BERNARD
Title:	L'Oeil écoute/Dedans-Dehors
Label:	RECOLLECTION GRM (AUSTRIA)
Format:	LP
Price:	$22.00
Catalog #:	REGRM 003LP

2013 repress. L'Oeil écoute (1970): "From the very first moment, caught by the musical tone heard from inside a train, the trip offered by this piece, woven with different materials, triggers in us various climates able to give our imagination power over sounds: the power to guide them through our secret mazes rather than to blindly follow them like Panurge. This form of (auditory) contemplation thus attempts to enable us to lose ourselves outside our far too familiar and usual territories. Perhaps, in looking too hard, man eventually stops listening. And, as I said when creating the piece in 1970, the eye, now a 'solitary wanderer' only has ears for what assaults it." Dedans-Dehors (1977): "When listening to the sound material, we metamorphose the inside into an outside. This notion of metamorphosis is one of the principles that leads the course of the musical suite, reflecting changes (fluidsolid passages: water/ice/fire) or movements (ebb/flow/wave, inspiration/expiration) or inside-outside passages (door/individual/crowd). Thus, the perceived object is not entirely what we would have liked it to be. Our music brings us closer to some while it takes us away from others: each with their own inside." --Bernard Parmegiani; Cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin, June 2012.

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