Despite the fact that music presents a vast array of options, as either musician or listener, you can only live in one idea at any one time. No matter how many sounds your instrument can make, or how many shelves are required to house your collection, all these choices and selection processes come down to a moment in time where you decide to co-exist with just one possibility.
This collection gathers 6 albums that Romania born, and France based composer Costin Miereanu previously released on his own label Poly-Art Records, between 1982 and 1984. Each album containing a side long track gleaned from a variety of synthesizers – Minimoog, Polymoog, PPG Wave, Prophet-10, and supplemented by piano, organ, and a handful of other instrumental sources.
Every track sits around 20 minutes in length, and zones in on a particular grouping of equipment and sounds. In each case Miereanu improvises within a carefully selected set up, mapping out and documenting their unique characteristics, peculiarities and qualities. Far from Poly-Art Recordings 1976 – 1982 looming in like some overwhelming, almost 4 and a half hour academic monster, it’s a spectacular and easily digestibly gateway to 12 lysergic imaginings of some geometric nirvana.
Clearly, Miereanu spend a lot of time exploring the possibilities of his equipment. What was the most fertile junction between x and y, at what point the overlapping signals, pulses and rhythms best mesh into forward momentum or align into magic and actual sonic wormholes. Dipping into this boxset, even casually, quickly opens out into a jaw dropping adventure.
Finis-Terre (1978) is the opening sequence. 21 minutes that feels like a whole new world is being switched on. Droning and throbbing in shifting layers as your brain starts to fizz with delight. Terre de Feu (1976) is reflections in a woozy shimmering haze.
The electronic bubbling Le Royaume de la Reine Pellapouf (1977-78) immediately stuns. Reminiscent of the dizzy electronics that surge in, on the ambient fog of Brian Eno’s Tal Coat (from On Land released 4 years later) but instead, the whole space is packed with pristine endless tangents and vectors. The music sits at the impossibly active fissure between almost nothing, and way too much.
This head bending intensity continues, in the even more saturated next track– Première Coïncidence (1977-78). Another generous tumble around an atom of sound as it regenerates endless DNA strands of human catnip…
Musique Climatique (1979) forms into classic minimal piano figures, easily referencing Steve Reich and Philip Glass, before becoming overloaded with fragments of spoken words, different voices, languages and statements reminiscent of Robert Ashley. The meaning dissolving from something somehow trivial into unexpectedly triumphant.
Elsewhere, the thick atmospheric drones of Finis-Terre (1978) and the oily surfaces of Fata Morgana (1981) draw huge filmic arcs. Piano-Miroir (1978) floats around Erik Satie keys and gentle throbs of synth, whilst Jardins Oubliés (1981) and Jardins Désertés (1981) both sparkle and drip like some shape shifting hallucinatory garden fountain.
As you bounce around in this music, it becomes apparent that everything here is worthy of more exploration. Whilst it’s easy to spot Miereanu’s influences, there is a sense that he’s most excited about spending time locked into these deliberately restricted set ups. At times, it’s apparent these pieces possibly don’t even stray far into any sort of compositional rigour, simply presented as passages of discovery but that feels like the whole point. Innocent, naïve, a simple joy of playing and listening giving continual access to a much more head bending reality than our regular one.
Miroitements (1981) spends 23 minutes bathing in electronic sparkles. Each time the music pulses forward, every detail causes a prism of energy to burst. The magic here isn’t what is played, but simply that sound treated in this way blossoms into utter beauty. This whole collection effortlessly creates a form of wonder.
Things draw to a close with joyous time lapsed cloud busting of Nuages-Nuages (1982), and finally to Carrousel (1982). Only as the final track chaotically builds into lopsided mayhem does the whole thing feel like its finally reached saturation point. A sense the objectives of this project has somehow been accomplished.
Clearly, Poly-Art Recordings 1976 – 1982 has been a pleasure to explore. Miereanu is an artist we’ve been aware for a while, but this boxset is hugely significant.
Whilst it’s admittedly a nerdy detail, the fact Philippe Besombes and Jean-Louis Rizet engineered much of this material, aligns these pieces with the absolutely peak of French psychedelic experimentation. Poly-Art Recordings 1976 – 1982 is part kosmiche, part rippling electronics, gathered into a joyously creative journal of possibilities.
In this collected form, it’s a deeply welcoming, hugely trippy electronic masterpiece.
Prepare to get gloriously lost in this for weeks on end…
Poly-Art Recordings 1976 – 1982 is out now.
Available as a 6CD boxset co-released by Aurfya and Metaphon and digitally on Aurfya
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