from: Felix Kubin, May, 16th, 2000

Parmegiani's "Violostres" double CD is simply some of the best and most intimidating music I've ever heard - dense, and completely unpredictable. Each subsequent listen takes my breath away. It's a solid collection, with no filler, and until this CD, the only Parmegiani release in my household. The pieces on this CD are a bit less impressive, but only in comparison to the mastery of "Violostres". The opening piece, "Du pop a l'ane" is a collage featuring a heavy-handed use of stereo separation that is mighty disorienting. Piano, bongos, jazz music, guitar and bass riffs, spooky organ, orchestral music, all cut-up and arranged in a manner that allows each segment of sound to remain distinct. Except for the crazed panning, this is a very "dry" piece, without the richness of sound I was expecting. Plays like a jump-cut chamber orchestra spiced up with some found sounds, but the recording remains "flat" or "dry", making me want to turn the volume up, which doesn't really help either. The title track is much better- a bass riff that was also used on "Du pop a l'ane" repeats throughout the beginning, over and under massively cut up fragments of music and noise. The "pop" elements, that is, the repetition of percussive musical riffs taken from other records, makes this sound very "now". But this 1968 recording is over 30 years old. Amazing stuff - especially around the 7 minute mark, when everything seems to slow down and float in a thick sea of echoed loops and moans. The use of tapes mixing instrumental music and found noises in a mixed blur also brings to mind Faust's "Faust Tapes". 1966's "Jazzex" features four jazz musicians "playing in a completely free style" along to a tape prepared by Parmegiani. Except for the stand-up bass, who plays it a little too cool, this plays less like free jazz and more like the abstract "fake chamber jazz" on those early Zappa albums. The tape sounds are not very upfront in the mix, and the piece is dominated by the horns, which are "out" but not absolutely free, so to speak. The second half of the 16 minute piece sees the jazzmen chilling out a bit, allowing the tape a bit more breathing room. The closing track includes a "bandoneon", which is a small accordion, playing a tango-like theme alongside a tape of manipulated sounds from the bandoneon itself. An analog synth sequence pops in around the 6 minute mark, and as the bando' plays on, it sounds like some grinning, mad Argentine trying to aggravate a somber, purposeful Klaus Schulze. All in all, it's good to have more Parmegiani music available on CD, and this collection is worth the purchase just for the wonderful title track.

from: ANGBASE #5 (USA) May 2000 reviewed by: Carlos Pozo

 

Born in 1927, Bernard Parmegiani had little formal musical tuition and originally trained and worked as a sound engineer. But in his dedication to electroacoustic music, he combines an improvisor's intuition with a composer's sense of form. Unfortunately, only a fraction of Parmegiani's output has been recorded. His tightly structured "De Natura Sonorum" from 1975 appeared last year on INA. However, none of the tracks here quiete approaches that masterpiece of electronic abstraction. "Et apres"(1973) comes closest, even though it features a real-time instrument in Michel Portal's bandoneon. The track opens with a gauzy, tango-like backdrop to Portal's huffings and sputterings. The bandoneon is treated so that it eventually comes across as a choir merging seamlessly with the electronic sounds.
The other three tracks, from 1966-1969, are more clearly in the musique concrète tradition. "Du Pop A L'Ane" is a collage of pop and symphonic sounds, but Parmegiani avoids - or simply lacked the resources to adopt - the mosaic approach of plunderphonics. His extracts are longer and often readily identifiable, with quotes from Stravinsky's "The Rite Of Spring", Messiaen's "Quartett For The End Of The Time" and Beethoven, set against jazz and Latin music and snippets of spoken voice and radio announcements. "Pop'eclectic" is an "electroacoustic divertimento", which mixes natural and synthetic sounds with a prominent role for Mantovani's sweeping strings and pop samples. "Jazzex"(1966) has the least enduring impact. A running electroacoustic tape accompanies a group of French free jazz musicans, but the live music is uninspired and the recording very boxy - then again, most of these recordings are showing signs of age. But this is a much-needed collection from an important period of a neglected master.

from: THE WIRE # 193, March 2000 reviewed by: Andy Hamilton

 

The record by Bernard Parmegiani looks like a vintage one, until, reading the sleeve liner notes, you realize it is... a vintage record! Four previously unreleased tracks written between 1966 and 1973, where the legendary French composer, a milestone of the INA-GRM and a key figure for the development of musique concrète, shows all of his great talent. "Du Pop à l'Ane" is a dynamic and funny patchwork of someone else's musics (symphonic, jazz, beat, The Doors of "Spanish Caravan" and "When the Music Is Over", Mozart, Messiaen...), the title track, originally written as a soundtrack for a Foldès film, is an electroacoustic scherzo with unconsciously exotic space effects; while the last ones "Jazzex" and "Et Après..." respectively force a free jazz combo (multi-instrumentalis Bernard Vitet will bring this experience with Parmegiani directly into Un Drame Musical Instantané) and an accordeon player (Michel Portal) to come to terms with sound directly fixed on magnetic tape. After all, listening to people like Parmegiani, you realize that Nurse With Wound, Zorn & Co., though genial ones, have not invented (almost) anything, and the various trendy DJs, turntablists and new electronica freaks too: not bad for a brisk old man born in 1927 who, at the time of these recordings, was already in his forties!

from: BLOW UP/Italy January 2000 reviewed by: Nicola Catalano

 

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