Uploaded September 2014 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
Elementa (1998), creates a soundscape so intoxicating and permutable, so enraptured with its own sounds and textures, with its overblown harmonic crackles and dripping sedimentary layers, that the listener wants to burrow into every sample and settle there. Mr. Risset’s homage to the elements has an almost pagan sensuality encompassing the infinite and mundane simultaneously. Elementa is formally, sonically, and emotionally convincing. The four movements sound well individually, but together they showcase a composer completely in command of his own voice.
Video created with Sonic Visualizer and vokoscreen on Kubuntu 14.04 (Linux).
Elementa (1998), creates a soundscape so intoxicating and permutable, so enraptured with its own sounds and textures, with its overblown harmonic crackles and dripping sedimentary layers, that the listener wants to burrow into every sample and settle there. Mr. Risset’s homage to the elements has an almost pagan sensuality encompassing the infinite and mundane simultaneously. Elementa is formally, sonically, and emotionally convincing. The four movements sound well individually, but together they showcase a composer completely in command of his own voice.
Video created with Sonic Visualizer and vokoscreen on Kubuntu 14.04 (Linux).
![Henri Pousseur - Dallage Arabesque (Paysages Planetaires) [2004]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BQAVZx58QX8/mqdefault.jpg "Henri Pousseur - Dallage Arabesque (Paysages Planetaires) [2004]
2004 release. In 2000, Henri Pousseur was asked by Philippe Samyn, a Brussels-based architect who liked to work in collaboration with other artforms, to lend his support to the plan for the construction of a business complex by one of the most important building enterprises in the country. There were four low buildings arranged like different parts of a medieval castle-village, grouped around a kind of large open central court. Leaning on the suggested image, Pousseur immediately suggested that the first spinal-column be composed of an electronic carillon, sounding in variations every hour, thus marking the hours between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Henri Poussuer imagined then a connection between Nivelles-time (a city 40 km south of Brussels, where this large project would be situated) and the time of the entire planet and the more or less metaphoric sonic and musical realities attached to it. He made on the one hand the 16 hours of a theoretically complete day of work (from the cleaning service up to the last research in the office) correspond to the 24 hours of a complete terrestrial revolution. He then divided the globe into eight large north/south slices, themselves divided into three perpendicular rings: north, center, south, with the understanding that only inhabited lands were taken into consideration. To each of the 8 great hours of the total duration, Pousseur associated three regions, one of each ring (north/central/south) set out as far apart as possible on the terrestrial globe. Over a background of a fairly continuous variety of noises which are perpetually evolving: sea, fire, city, swamp, industry, forest, etc., there are ethno-musical samples from one region or from several regions involved, more or less worked over by all sorts of numerical methods which vary their capacity to be recognized as quasi-traditional music. This work once finished (realized in the studio of the composers son Denis), Pousseur made a synthesis on three discs by superimposing the landscapes (a bit in the manner of the previous Etudes paraboliques) in 16 Paysages Planetaires. The titles of the landscapes express by their contraction the simultaneous or alternate presence of several regions; for example, Alaskamazonie is self-explanatory. Something like Gamelan Celtibere is a sort of play on something between the West Coast of Europe with the Indonesian archipelago and even the northern part of Australia. Continuing like this you could find it amusing to reconstruct the circumplanetary movement of the work. Michel Butor wrote the luminous prose-verse alternating poetic structure which accompanies these landscapes. His text is included in the 60-page documentation booklet, also featuring two long essays by Henri Pousseur: Paysages Planetaires and Atmospheric and Cultural Sources for Each of the Landscapes. Finally, with this work, Henri Pousseur makes an homage to all the singers and instrumentalists, sound engineers, ethnic musicologists and editors who have either produced, or gathered and transmitted, all the marvelous musical invention which inspired and nourished the work and which, with the sounds of the world, of nature, of society and of industry, are supposed to represent a kind of formal summing-up of lifes multiplicity. All the images, obtained through extensive digital treatments, were conceived and manipulated by Henri Pousseur.
Video created with Sonic Visualizer and vokoscreen on an openSUSE 13.2 Linux System.")
![Michael Hoenig - Departure From The Northern Wasteland [1978]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Di5GGKv7_00/mqdefault.jpg "Michael Hoenig - Departure From The Northern Wasteland [1978]
Lets go straight to the point: If you are fond of mid 70s Tangerine Dream, you will enjoy for sure this album. Departure From The Northern Wasteland is crafted in the same stone than Ricochet and Encore, minus the guitars. With this record, Michael Hoenig offers beautiful, contemplative and inspired electronic music dispatched in four pieces, mostly instrumental.
The title track is undoubtly the highlight of the disc. Perfectly sequenced, synthetizers themes evolve slowly and superposing mellotron waves reveal magic and crystalline landscapes. The song fades away softly during its final part. The tune could have well figured on a Tangerine Dream release. The next track, Hanging Garden Transfer, displays a much faster, colder and more robotic sound. There are truely very trippy and catchy passages in it. Voices Of Where arrives as a surprise, as it features no rythm and hardly no sequencing at all, mainly mellotron and backing vocals. The tune is relaxing but is also the weakest of the album, as it tends to be repetitive by moments. This is easily catched up with the ending track, Sun And Moon, which brings the sequencer back. It is at first glance reminiscent of Ashras New Age Of Earth. Then keyboards become more energic to offer a quite enchanting and spacey futuristic conclusion.
Not terrificly new but very inspired, Departure From The Northern Wasteland is quite similar to the albums from the classic Tangerine Dream line up with Baumann. It was released the same year the band tried to change their sound, to create something else. However, this album proves that Michael Hoenig can rank among the best electronic progressive german musicians. Its a pity he hadnt recorded more albums (the next one, Xcept One, is rather deceiving). Highly recommended to TD fans !
(Review by Modrigue on progarchives.com)")
