France 1971In the twilight days of the 1970s henry built a brainwave-conduction system which he placed on the head(s) of various individuals, feeding the resultant voltages into a giant synthesizer... the concept being that the “composer” of the music (in the case of this recording: roger lafosse) was the one to whom the transducers were affixed. hearing the music (inarguably henry’s fiercest and most unrelenting bit of pure analog scree) it’s understandable that this process never sparked an auto-electroacoustic-composition movement. Originally issued in a beautiful silver/black foil-stamped sleeve (repreoduced wonderfully here) as part of the illustrious prospective 21˚siecle series on philips. mind-slaying and so incredibly aggressive for a record from 1970. The Sweet Sweet sounds of pure oscillators.
Download here,
Pierre Henry
15 comments:
the "Pierre Henry - Musique Corticalart" download link works now.
many thamks
Pierre Henry...A long time ago, in my college days, I was part of a yippie group of protesting dopers that was a fringe/splinter group of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade called Youth Against War and Fascism. Under this pretentious label, we would actually get together and picket the Student Union on campus, sometimes hand out great gobs of leaflets printed to resemble Mao's Little Red Book, even made a march on Washington in '73, too. The last time I believe we all got together was when Allende was overthrown, to picket the local offices of the CIA. I remember there were more guys with shiny black shoes, shades and big-ass cameras taking photos of us than there were of us carrying signs on sticks. That was when I figured the Movement was a losing proposition.
At any rate, one of the things we'd do, as a purely revolutionary act--of course!--was to get together, listen to avant-garde rock or jazz or experimental music while doing bong hits or mushrooms, sometimes peyote, mescaline... One of the guys brought in this awesome album that glittered like polarized tin foil. You held it under the light and the op art showed up just like polished aluminum. It was from France, Pierre Henry "Apocalypse De Jean", and it was like nothing any of us had ever heard before, except, maybe part of the voice over, which I suppose were trenchant bible passages that sounded like they were being read by Godard's Alpha 60 from his sci-fi masterpiece, "Alphaville." Even today I can only describe one section from memory. It sounded as if the end of the world was coming from that ultimate traffic jam, you know?--the one where the last car pulls out of the last driveway onto the last street and everything becomes gridlocked and frozen like Vonnegut's ice-nine and all at once every car horn in creation beings blaring...then there's this almost swinging, lurching pendulum of doom gonging thru one blues bar chord on the the piano's lowest register until you feel caught in the throes of some jack-knife boogie woogie that makes your knees flex and back spasm as if you were being zapped by taser blasts.
Yeah, that was fun. This one is like mother's milk. Reminds me how much bands like Mouse on Mars, Rome, and such owe to Sferics--the actual recordings of "cosmic rays" hitting the atmosphere...and composers of Musique Concrete. My revelation was that when you play this on iTunes and hit the button for visual effects, it makes patterns very similar to what a recent tv special on String Theory describe as the building material of the subatomic universe, which is, again, what this hints at in squiggles, squeals, pops and scrapes...
Hi,
the download link has expired..
Could you repost it?
I just searched a little and it looks really hard to get..
- Best Regards,
Tuk
Hey man, any possiblity of getting this re-upped? Thanks.
And great comment from CVPG, enjoyed reading.
I just checked the link and it seems to work. try again
Awesome! I've been curious to hear this for some time and now I'm listneing!
This is a very interesting album. Thanks!
link doesn't work. Please repost! I HAVE to hear this. what a great site!
I would check the link again. I just tested it and it still works. Maybe it was down briefly.
This doesn't seem to be working, which is a shame as it's sounds amazing - could you please repost?
Thanks in advance!
Updated the Download Link,
Nov 20 2007
High respect for posting this and many other great releases. Cheers!
what a strange and cool release!
I think monsieur Thomas Bangalter used many samples in his live and studio previous productions.
thank you
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