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LP
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OME 1008LP
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2020 restock. Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Pierre Henry's Orphée Ballet, originally released in 1964. Scored for Maurice Béjart's choreography to the Orphée Ballet, based on the Greek god, Orpheus, this is one of Pierre Henry's finest works of musique concrète, the genre in which Henry was an early innovator and to which he devoted his career. After years working for the French national radio (RTF) and honing his studio chops on radio spots and editing/composition, Henry formed his own studio in 1958 and began working on modern dance and ballet and soundtrack work. Incorporating percussion, industrial soundscapes, nature sounds, spoken French narrative, and synthesized tones, Orphée Ballet is a beautiful piece that while less known than what is perhaps his most famous work, also for Béjart's ballet production, 1967's Les Jerks Électroniques De La Messe Pour Le Temps Présent Et Musiques Concrètes Pour Maurice Béjart, is equally compelling and groundbreaking. Following his passing in 2017 at age 89, Henry's work has found renewed interest, and this is a welcome reissue of one of his rarest and finest works. Truly brilliant. Comes in a heavy sleeve with a hand-numbered sticker.
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LP
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CACK 006LP
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2017 repress. Cacophonic presents Maléfices, an outstanding film score by Pierre Henry, often overlooked in lists of the composer's work. The score is a dream record for fans of early electronics, female vocal manipulation, and horror soundtracks. Widely recognized as one of the original sonic architects of the movement known as musique concrète (having joined Pierre Schaeffer's initiative as early as 1949), Pierre Henry was arguably the first musician to entertain the notion of this defiant musical revolution coexisting with traditional and popular music. Initially using the media of modern dance and spoken word as a platform to contextualize his tape-music mutations (notably in unison with Maurice Bejart), Henry's fusion of academic with thematic ideas led to the birth of electronic sound design for film and theatre, exemplified most prevalently in the macabre. His score for Henri Decoin's 1962 film Maléfices (Where the Truth Lies) (starring Juliette Gréco) is the missing link between his earliest avant-garde recordings and his later celebrated pop experiments with Michel Colombier and Spooky Tooth. It rivals such cinematic sound as Daphne Oram's work for Jack Clayton's 1961 horror film The Innocents, and features Henry at what is perhaps his most melodic, fragile, and enchanting (especially for this unforgiving, formative era in his career). Layering vocal tape loops and gossamer feminine voice treatments with plucked strings, white noise wind, and brooding, industrial treated piano textures, Henry magnifies the film's intoxicated, hallucinatory narrative. This concise set of complete themes is presented here, fully remastered for the first time, alongside rare excerpts from two of the composer's very earliest and least obtainable forays into theatrical sound design: instrumental parts of Henry's first stereo reconstruction of Maurice Bejart's 1961 ballet Orphée, and his seldom-heard concrète interludes from Darius Milhaud and Max Gérard's opera Mariage de la Feuille et du Cliché (1958).
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LP
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DOZ 403LP
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"Pierre Henry's 1953 'Veil of Orpheus' is the first example of symphonic musique concrete, the use of non-traditional sources and 'real' sounds like trains, dogs barking, footsteps, etc., in place of actual instruments and then electronically manipulating these sounds in new ways. It was originally composed for the opera Orpheus 53, which was written with movement founder Pierre Schaeffer for the Donauescliingen Festival. Despite the quantum leaps made in the field of electronics over the past 50 years, this initial experiment still manages to convey its original importance. The piece uses 'concrete sounds' much in the same way a traditional orchestra would use individual instruments. Besides two versions of 'Veil of Orpheus' (the original 27-minute version and the second 15-minute version used in the Maurice Bejart-Pierre Henry ballet Orpheus in 1958), there are two shorter pieces -- 'Entity' and 'Spiral' -- which evoke an unsettling search for meaning that is so often associated with Henry's work."
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LP
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DOZ 404LP
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Repressed. "Musique Sans Titre, composed in 1951 at the Studio d'essai of the RTF, was one of Henry's earliest attempts at musique concrète. Spatiodynamisme, on the other hand, was based on the 1954 recordings of a Nicolas Schöffer sound sculpture. Metallic parts, mirrors, lights and sounds emanating from a 50-meter building interacted with the environment and visitors. Henry recorded various grating and scraping sounds from the metallic sculpture and then manipulated them for this piece, which was influenced by Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo's L'Arte Dei Rumori."
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CD
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PHI 2202
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Features: "Pierres Féfléchies (1982), La Noire à Soixante (1961), Gymkhana (1970)." 2 of these were previously available on the o/p Mantra CD Noir A Soixante. "Reflechies" is an almost anthemic, crescendo-building electronic work from 1982.
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12"
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PHI 4975EP
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"The new remix 12" containing contributions from Ursula 1000, Moog Cook Book, Kojak, and Pierre Henry." New remixes of "Psyché Rock".
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CD
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PHI 4402
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New version of "Messe de Liverpool", superceding the prior CD version on Mantra (now deleted). "Liverpool" is a classic electronic mass from 1967, originally issued by Philips on LP. " "Fantaisie Messe Pour le Temps Présent" is a 23-minute remix of the historic 1967 meeting between Pierre Henry and Michel Columbier; it was remixed in 1967 by William Orbit, working from original "electronic jerks" from the original and parts of Henry's 1991 remix of the same. One of the ultimate psychedelic/electronic mergers.
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