Label: Zeitkratzer

数あるこのプロジェクトの音源の中でも激推しの一枚!!GRMの主要メンバーの一人でもあったIvo Malecに捧げられた作品!!ケージやルシエ、ジェームス・テニーといった重鎮コンポーザーの名作リアライズから、灰野敬二氏とのコラボレーション音源数種を残しているドイツの超強者集団Zeitkratzer。本作はクロアチアの傑出したコンポーザーであり、器楽曲及び管弦楽曲の作曲家でありながら70年代初頭よりノイジーなアプローチを行なっていたIvo Malecへのオマージュ作。氏と親交が深いリーダーReinhold Friedlが長時間の対話より導き出した多様な側面を持つMalec作品として制作、生々しいサウンド・コラージュと精巧に構築された音響空間が厳格なまでの美しさを創出する超傑作。お馴染みGRMの最高責任者であったFrancois Bayleのテキストを掲載した24ページブックレット付き。





CD - digisleeve with a 24 page booklet, texts by Francois Bayle, Michel Chion, Reinhold Friedl

"the sound object is the first idea of a great new world" - Ivo Malec

Reinhold Friedl’s à Malec is dedicated to Ivo Malec, one of Croatia’s most outstanding composers and one of the most prominent members of the GRM, the Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris. Behind Malec’s polished image as a composer of instrumental and orchestral works in France lies an astonishing body of electroacoustic work that today seems nothing short of revolutionary and prophetic: Bizarra and Triola – Symphonie pour moi-même reveal him as a noise musician as early as in the beginning of the 1970s; with Week-End, he presented a drone piece even before the term ‘drone music’ existed at all; and Recitativo showcases him as an ambient musician.

The transformation of electronic music into instrumental music was Malec’s trademark; zeitkratzer is now applying precisely this approach to Malec’s own electronic music. Reinhold Friedl knows Malec well; he has visited him several times in Paris since 2011, interviewed him at length and produced radio programmes about him and his music. Many aspects of Malec’s work culminate in à Malec: raw sound collages contrast with finely crafted atmospheres. Deep, eerie drones blend with synthetic bubbling; rattling noise loops abruptly give way to soft beeps; and even allusions to Malec’s own instrumental music make an appearance. Music of austere beauty. And anyone familiar with Malec’s electroacoustic music will discover many allusions: rhythm modules from Bizarra, subtle sonic references to Luminetudes – do the stormy bass drums refer to Ombra or to Malec’s à Wagner? Is the overtone singing the transformed jaw harp passage from Ombra, or already a drone? Do the crackling, scratchy sounds refer to Bizarra, right? Obviously à Malec takes up the composers sound preferences across works, his architecture of musical objects, musical objects that can even be precisely elaborated, large-scale progressions.

Ivo Malec (1925–2019) studied composition in Zagreb. In 1955, whilst he was already director of an opera house, he was awarded a residency scholarship to Paris, which proved to be a formative experience for him. Pierre Schaeffer, the director of the GRM, became his ‘true and only master’, and concrete music his ‘bible’. He remained in Paris for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, Malec did not become an electroacoustic composer: Whilst some of his tape pieces, such as Luminétudes or Triola ou Symphonie pour moi-même, attracted worldwide attention, he became the GRM’s instrumental composer, the epitome of a composer influenced by musique concrète, and living proof that Pierre Schaeffer’s theory of sound objects could also bear fruit in the orchestral sphere. Today, it can be said that Malec’s electroacoustic music was underrated: in terms of its distinctiveness and radicalism, it even surpasses his instrumental music. zeitkratzer focuses precisely on this and reflects it back onto amplified instruments with sonic delight.