6CD – Auryfa | Metaphon

Poly-Art Recordings 1976-1982 is a 6-CD set curated by Auryfa and Metaphon. It brings together for the first time, a reissue of the series of self-produced cassettes and vinyl records by the Romanian-French composer Costin Miereanu. His career had already been established by then with Luna Cinese (1975), a debut work included in the historic new music series from the Cramps, the label of Gianni Sassi. If at first the Poly-Art releases went almost unnoticed, overtime they became cult works for new generations of listeners. The six albums included in this boxset contain twelve tracks in total and are punctuated by a strong sense of electronic abstraction. The first two – Le Royaume de la Reine Pellapouf and Fata Morgana – are made exclusively with synthesizers and seem to anticipate much of the ambient, electroacoustic and glitch music that emerged between the 1990s and 2000s. Among the most representative pieces are ‘Terre de Feu’ (1976) and ‘Finis-Terre’ (1978), which both appear on the album Dérives. Here, Miereanu combines manipulated concrete sounds, electric organ and analog synthesizers, building layered textures made of prolonged drones, internal pulsations and almost geological modulations. The sound matter expands slowly, with no obvious turning points, as if the listener is asked to follow an invisible map. In ‘Piano-Miroir’ (1978), the piano is filtered and reprocessed electronically, giving rise to reflections that dialogue with the Satian heritage, while ‘Musique Climatique’ (1979) – the only piece entirely entrusted to acoustic instruments – inserts fragments of delicate cadences, achieving a rare balance between tension and suspense. The approach to ‘Jardins Oubliés’ and ‘Jardins Désertés’ (1981) is entirely different. Both are composed on the PPG-Wave digital synthesizer, resulting in minimal sequences and dilated pulsations, creating landscapes of pure synthesis with variations that alter the perception of time. The set of six albums included offer a coherent path, ranging from exclusively electronic experimentation to hybrid and meditative works, showing an author able to move naturally between different techniques, controlled improvisation and formal construction. This recovery operation restores visibility to a corpus that was confined to enthusiasts for decades, and which fits coherently into the broader movement of reissues that, in recent years, is broadening our gaze on European electroacoustic music.

 

Costin Miereanu – Poly-Art Recordings 1976-1982