Vladimir Ussachevsky – Film Music
Vladimir Ussachevsky was among the earliest tape music composers, who combined the musique concrète style of France with Germany’s pure electronic approach, and took almost immediate advantage of the magnetic tape recorder when it first appeared at the beginning of the 1950s. He also co-founded The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1959. “Suite From No Exit” (1962) is a 14-minute soundtrack for a film of Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit directed by Orson Welles, comprised of six short interludes of appropriate moodiness. Hazy, midnight curtains; violent, echoing clangs and hissing mists coalesce into each other with ease.
“Line Of Apogee” (1967) is a much lengthier 43-minute soundtrack for an avant-garde film of the same name by Lloyd Williams. It combines environmental, vocal and instrumental sounds into a vast array of billowing curtains. Electronic hissing, menacing winds, distant clanging, somber piano, sirens morphing into operatic singing that is transformed further into insanely cut-up shards and shimmers, classical vocals, electronic echo-knocks, synth beeps, rain, children’s music box, stormy clouds, a lone seal call, a woman’s crazy laughing, mangled webs of electronic sounds, urgent beeping—all soaked with supreme, dark ambience. “The path to light lies through darkness,” intones a somber male voice just before a loud, hissing sound takes over, with wind. Another dim cloud floats into view as a second voice, this time female, intones: “Darkness is difficult, pathfinders are few. You have ended your quest that you may begin anew. You have found yourself that you may be reborn beyond yourself. Come into the light. I am with you. I am waiting.” Some strange tones then sound as the aforementioned male voice reappears one last time: “The answer: only the truth disguised in a dream.”
Label: New World Records Catalog Number: 80389-2 Format: CD Packaging: Jewel case Tracks: 13 Total Time: 57:16 Country: United States Released: 1990 Related Artists: Otto Luening More: Discogs, Forced Exposure, Wikipedia
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