IGOR WAKHEVITCH NAGUAL LP FRENCH PROG-PSYCH-ELECTRONIC

$

185

IGOR WAKHEVITCH

 NAGUAL (LES AILES DE LA PERCEPTION) LP

Emi

Rare 70's original of this progressive electronic masterpiece from Igor Wakhevitch.

Some info on the release:  Very rare original issue, released in France sometime in the 70's on the EMI label. "Musique pour "This, That and the Other" de Carolyn Carlson, et le groupe de recherche Théâtrale de l'Opéra de Paris.".  

Nagual: Although a concept in its own right, Nagual "Les Ailes de la Perception" (from 1977) again features music for a Carolyn Carlson ballet. Arguably, it’s the closest to Ralph Lundsten, as a largely cosmic work, with looping synthesizer patterns, putting melody against dissonance, moving on from the darker edge of the "new-age". The format is different to all the previous albums, in that this has 12 tracks (ranging from 30 seconds to 8 minutes) and features musics unheard of within the Wakhevitch oeuvre before, like piano works of a weirdly construed type (reminding of Ron Geesin) and what feels like a bizarre Celtic jig amongst them. The mood is generally mysterious and enigmatic, largely based around cycling patterns of keyboards and other instruments. The range is very diverse and surprising. But, having said that, typically Wakh?vitch it is - as an uneasy balance that’s engrossing - still so enigmatic and fresh !

Igor Wakevitch studies the piano under the guidance of the composer Olivier Messiaen. He spent a short period at the GRM of Pierre Scheaffer in 1968. He discovered Maurice Bejart, met Pink Floyd and Soft Machine, worked with Terry Riley and composed the music of the Opera-Poem by Salvador Dali "Etre Dieu" in 1974. Donc... innovation !An unclassifiable talent, Igor Wakhevitch could be seen as the French equivalent of someone like Ralph Lundsten, or an explorer like Franco Battiato, a pionner who proliferated in the 70’s with a series of highly original and unusual albums. Although Wakhévitch is a relatively unknown composer, he gained a small cult following in the late 1990s after praise circulated by Nurse with Wound (on the list of influences in their first album, from 1979), Michael Gira of Swans and a review of one of his studio albums by Dominique Leone for a feature entitled "It Was the Strangest Record I Had Ever Heard" on Pitchfork Media.

Igor Wakhevitch’s roots are obscure , though his name implies he is obviously of Russian ancestry, and apparently his father was a celebrated theatre set-designer. It was obviously in the setting of the theatre that Igor Wakhevitch saw new potentials in music. He was something of a genius as a young musician. By the age of 17 he had already won the first prize for piano at the Superior Conservatoire in Paris. But, not content to stay in the classical world, he moved on. His academic qualifications served him well. In 1968 he was working at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (then directed by Pierre Schaeffer) with access to some of the most advanced studio equipment around. There he learnt his craft as a sound designer, as a master of studio trickery and musique-concrete techniques. The perfect foil for his own musical talents, and as a way to play with the possibilities of sound and other musical forms. This fertile environment, at studios that were regularly visited and/or used by the likes of Pierre Henry, Francois Bayle, Bernard Parmegiani, et al, was the ideal springboard for the creation of a new form of music.Pierre Henry had already become celebrated for his works combining rock and electronics in the early part of the 60’s, and particularly his music for the avant-garde ballets of Maurice Bejart. Igor Wakhevitch saw this as his oeuvre, being fascinated by the new forms of psychedelic rock that were making shock-waves in France. With the moniker "Ballet for the 21st Century" he worked with Bejart in an attempt to turn this underground pop culture into high art. Inspiration came from Soft Machine and Pink Floyd, and in fact Igor Wakhevitch worked quite extensively with Robert Wyatt and Soft Machine for a while. At this time, Igor Wakh?vitch also worked together with Terry Riley learning special tricks about tape delays and looping techniques. All this experience melted into the pot of what became a unique music, with a focus that lay in processing instruments, usually in a melodic framework, blending in rock and diverse classical forms, bringing different unlikely musics together, often in most perplexingly odd ways. Igor Wakhevitch thus became established at Pathe Marconi Studios and also did production work for other studios and labels, and as a result got in touch with the French up-and-coming home-grown rock scene. The seeds were set for a radical and unique new form of music.

Condition: Vinyl lies in mint- condition, looks super clean with no spindle marks at all and plays with light surface noise, while cover lies in only very good condition with quite visible age wear.

Tracklist

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