Charlemagne Palestine - Sound 1 (Alga Marghen, 2008)

Sur ce rare vinyle, le label Alga Marghen exhume une pièce inédite de Charlemagne Palestine datant des années 70. Pas encore de piano, ici il s'arme d'oscillateurs et de filtres pour construire une sculpture sonore en trois dimensions. Présenté comme ça, ça peut sembler compliqué. Quand on l'écoute, on se retrouve absorbé dans une masse sonore qui vibre tout autour de nous. C'est vraiment une expérience particulière!

Charlemagne Palestine
Sound 1
LP Alga Marghen Plana-P alga026 (Italy, 12-2008)

a1. Sound 1

Note : Single-sided LP, limited edition of 500 copies.
As the title well underlines, 'Sound 1' electronic sonority is a starting point in Charlemagne Palestine researches for the Golden Sonority. Previously unpublished, this radical and foundamental work has now been released on LP record in collaboration with the New Media Dept of Centre Pompidou (National Museum of Modern Art) in Paris for the first œuvres sonores event, December 15th, 2008. Charlemagne Palesitne started to dream of an expressive continuous evermoving everchanging sound form; an enormous sonorous 3-dimensional sculptural canvas in mid-air, using electronically produced sounds. At first he began experiments with simple sine tone generators emitting the purest sound waves without any overtones. Then, gradually, with access to moog and arps, he constructed sounds using the sine - sawtooth - square wave oscillators in a fluid everchanging mix of adding or filtering overtones and white noise to create sonorities constantly changing timbres and weight. Palestine experimented in this way from 1964 till 74 in NYC and then, in California, finally he assembled his own drone machine of 16 ultra stable oscillators designed by Serge Tcherepnin and 4 band pass filters designed by Donald Buchla. He would build up a sound, oscillator by oscillator, then add ever so slightly to the oscillator imput, tiny increments of white noise that would gradually make the sounds thicker and thicker untill they were immense sacred machines humming like gargantuan tibetan bees. Charlemagne played them very very loud, making all the room and objects in it resonate while outside all was quiet and sleeping. He worked like a painter with a palette and a canvas and he mixed and added and mixed and added over, entire nights, mixing adding and then lying on the mattress and listening and fine tuning. Finally, at a certain point, after several nights, the sonority seemed ready to record. He'd put on the tape, prepare the tape machine with the proper level as not to overload it and record the texture.

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