PACCAGNINI, ANGELO - MUSICA ELETTRONICA 1969/1971 ALLO STUDIO DI FONOLOGIA DELLA RAI DI MILANO (LP)

""Musica Elettronica allo Studio di Fonologia della RAI di Milano, 1969/1971" is the first stand-alone release ever dedicated to the work of Paccagnini. The LP, available individually as well as belonging to the more expansive box set edition, comprises three works, "Flou II", composed in 1971 for tape, piano, improvised percussion, and orchestral groups; "Partner", composed in 1969 for female voice and electronic sounds; and "Underground", composed in 1971 for four synthesizers. Unquestionably drawing on the political ferment of the era during which they were created, each is astoundingly tense in their structural arrangement and tonal and dissonant relationships, culminating as some of the most emotive avant-garde music created anywhere during that period. The first of these, "Flou II", heavily centres furious piano lines and clattering percussion into a palette of complex electroacoustic sounds, rising and falling with a relentless fury that could stand as a perfect sonorous mirror to the then raging war in Vietnam. The LP's second piece, "Partner" is a slightly more minimal and delicate affair, but no less tense or complex; threading the sweeping tones and bubbling textures of electronics with the primal utterances of the human voice, while the final, fully electronic composition, "Underground" manages to split the difference between its predecessors, upping the energy and tension while remaining delicate and complex, as pulses, long-tones, and textures bristle against each other to startling effect." (label info)