r/Documentaries • u/miraoister • Feb 07 '18
Ancient History A Portrait of Eliane Radigue (2006) "this short introduces us to the life and work of French minimal electronic composer Eliane Radigue. Discusses methods of composition, the challenges and difficulties of live electronic music."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2U0q4lZiFg53
u/blue_strat Feb 07 '18
Actual music of hers: Kyema.
It's derived from musique concrete, and these days is called ambient or some form of post-rock. She was much influenced by Tibetan Buddhism, so listening to it is about a meditative experience where changes in sound gradually unfold out of each other and you can let go of your thoughts without having an obvious verse-chorus-bridge structure to orient yourself in the moment. You could say it's one long moment.
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u/platewrecked Feb 08 '18
Thank you for that. Great music. I kept having these weird deja vus when I was listening to it.
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u/smileymn Feb 07 '18
She’s such a beautiful composer, thanks for this excited to watch it later!
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u/miraoister Feb 07 '18
yeah, i also posted this to /r/contemporart and /r/postpunk, if you fancy a different sort of discussion to what you'd get on /r/documentaries have a look there instead.
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u/ECHOxLegend Feb 07 '18
Hears indistinct humming noise* "ah the machine looks old, probably needs to warm up or something" watches her turn nobs for 5 minutes in relative silence "older than I thought..."
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u/tgifmondays Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 07 '18
Love her. For people actually interested I suggest listening to her stuff with a nice pair of headphones and relaxing. Or even while you work. I find it helps me focus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8Tn0JN-pzM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtB3bFQ0u_0
or check out Adnos or any of her stuff really.
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u/vito1221 Feb 07 '18
I listened with an open mind and am leaving wondering if this was put out by The Onion. This reminds me of the time wine experts did a blind taste test and chose a boxed wine.
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u/tgifmondays Feb 07 '18
Nothing is for everyone. It doesn't give me the immediate satisfaction of of say a 3 minute standard song, it's more of a state of being thing. I'm not even a buddhist, I don't meditate or do yoga (I wish I had the discipline). But when I can listen to it for a while it really gets me. The tones and pulses not only sound nice, but feel good on a deeper level. It's hard to explain.
I'm sure that sounds pretentious, I'm really trying not to. Hopefully you can give it another shot on another day, or don't it doesn't matter.
It's just another offering of music outside of the standard stuff, and I think it can accomplish things that most music can't. Vice versa too, I'm not claiming one over the other. Just different.
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u/vito1221 Feb 07 '18
I understand. My 25 year old son listens to everything under the sun, to the point that I was shocked he had not heard of Ms. Radigue. He did ask me if the post mentioned Delia Derbyshire (said he listens to her stuff 'once in awhile'). He scares me now.
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u/tgifmondays Feb 07 '18
I was going to bring her up to. They are both amazing! I'm pretty sure they were contemporaries. She has a good series where people describe there dreams of falling set to some early electronic music.
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Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 08 '18
He's broken. Get a new son. Hopefully you have that 25-year-old receipt from when you got him.
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u/vito1221 Feb 08 '18
I can pull up the most obscure/arcane 70's German Techno Pop band with a Japanese front man and he will know the song, and the next track on the album, and, on occasion, the producer of the album.
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u/Endercode Feb 08 '18
Delia Derbyshire gained a lot of attention by younger people after one of her songs was sampled by Danny Brown:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVyGxlgeAjc
Original:
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u/SouthernSmoke Feb 07 '18
I resonate with this comment so much. Side note: do you ever listen to Gas?
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Feb 08 '18
"Pop" gives me some sorta super power to forget the world and think about C Data structures, Calculus, and Newtonian Physics. Thank god for Gas.
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Feb 07 '18
[deleted]
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u/vito1221 Feb 08 '18
Was thinking white noise, but only because it's not my cup of tea, can't knock it just because of that.
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u/IzzuThug Feb 07 '18
I love ambient music. But don't enjoy this type. That first one hurt my ears just with the high pitch. The second one wasn't as bad but I still didn't enjoy it. I know it doesn't matter what I think, just thought I would give my two cents.
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u/ReptarKanklejew Feb 07 '18
Wtf, I listened to this at a low volume for like 10 minutes while doing work and now my ears are ringing like crazy.
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Feb 07 '18
That's the sound of the ether clawing at your consciousness, desperately trying to get in and fracture your perceptions of truth.
That, or maybe tinnitus?
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u/tgifmondays Feb 07 '18
It's funny, there is a comment on the one of the videos I posted where someone claims to have tinnitus and says the higher frequencies actually felt really nice.
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u/dex1999 Feb 07 '18
That was the worst thing I’ve ever listen to my entire life. In what way is that music.
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u/miellaby Feb 07 '18
I've never heard about this woman. Nor about this kind of sound sculpting. And now, I know what I'm going to listen to in 2018. I love this so much. Thanks OP.
Also a lot of material on Soundcloud.
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u/April_Fabb Feb 08 '18
Such a mesmerizing lady. Iirc, she shared her first Buchla-200 setup with Laurie Spiegel. I can highly recommend her L’île Re- Sonante for anyone who wants to know what her music sounds like.
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u/cat_soup_ Feb 07 '18
Oh man I love this woman. We need more female synthesists. Daphne Oram and Suzanne Ciani are some other good ones.
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u/evilyou Feb 07 '18
Came here hoping someone would mention Daphne Oram. These women were decades ahead of their time musically and electronic music definitely wouldn't be where it is today without them.
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Feb 07 '18
I think Pauline Oliveros fucked with some synths, didn't she? She at least hooked her accordion up to an effects processor and promptly got real weird with it.
In a good way. Either way, I'd put her records in the same section of a record store as the other ladies mentioned in this thread.
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Feb 08 '18
Why is it important to you to have female synthesists?
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u/cat_soup_ Feb 08 '18
I feel like synth music like this is mostly dominated by men and I like see women represented. Female synthesizers are some of my favorite regardless of gender. All people should be equal
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Feb 08 '18
Thanks for the reply. I see more people expressing equality as people of all group identities producing the same things in the same quality in the same fields. Would you say that that is your definition of equality? I am used to the idea of equality as an equal playing field in which different people or groups produce (usually) different results. Do you disagree with that definition? I guess I am just trying to figure out how I should define the word.
At any rate, thanks for the reply.
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Feb 08 '18
Equal opportunity. I don’t think that first definition you mention is even realistically possible, nor what I would think most people would want. Uniformity is bad, particularly in art.
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u/cat_soup_ Feb 08 '18
That's not exactly the full scope of equality. That's just how I feel about this specific area of things.
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u/TotesMessenger Feb 08 '18
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u/Nagsheadlocal Feb 07 '18
Like Delia Derbyshire, a mostly forgotten pioneer.
Glorious to see all those antique synths in action.
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u/chirs5757 Feb 08 '18
Haha yeah I’m not talking shit. I was just expecting some sort of music. Ease up there reddit buddies.
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Feb 07 '18
what the actual hell? Is this the electronic version of the Simpsons cat lady? All I heard is static noises ...
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u/externality Feb 07 '18
I think she was just showing how she generates the individual tones she uses for her compositions.
Here is a complete composition by her:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RrsiGmLp_E
It's ambient and starts slow but jump to around 12:00 to get a feel for how she uses the tones.
In 2000, she made her last electronic work in Paris, l'Ile Re-sonante, for which she received the Golden Nica Award at the festival Ars Electronica in 2006.
I would spend hours on end messing with the ring modulators on my C64 when I first got it...
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u/miraoister Feb 07 '18
yeah, i was thinking the same thing, she is helluva cooky. that synth is worth about 250,000 dollars currently.
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u/le_fuck Feb 07 '18
Man, worst demo ever. I would love an hour or maybe a couple years with that synth.
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u/Emilio_Molestevez Feb 07 '18
She's all about that fine. Slowly slowly changing the freq respnonse to evolve the sound. There are so many endless sounds and tones you could produce with that board though. We're all about that course.
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u/externality Feb 07 '18
I wonder if there is a digital simulator of it.
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u/le_fuck Feb 07 '18
Like a VST? There are plenty of plug-ins out there that, "simulate" as you say, modular synthesizers.
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u/carlsnakeston Feb 07 '18
Listened to her stuff on YouTube and I gotta say, for someone who listens to glitchcore and number stations, this isn't doing it for me. It's not really anything I feel. Just drawn out tones kinda similar to number stations tho.
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u/chirs5757 Feb 07 '18
She never makes any fucking music!!
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u/zewm426 Feb 08 '18
Agreed. This shit is a joke. All these hipsters downvoting you. It's fucking modulated noise. It's not music. I could fart and move my buttcheeks to change the tones, it's not music.
"Ugh, you wouldn't understand. Blah blah".
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u/chirs5757 Feb 07 '18
I kept waiting to see this old lady bust out some techno jams. Left quite disappointed.
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u/wooferwolf Feb 08 '18
Electronic music performance has no challenges or difficulties. You press the spacebar to play the song that you already mixed in the studio and then pretend to twist knobs on filters that aren't actually connected to anything... I don't know what this lady is on about.
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u/WettestMouth Feb 08 '18
Perhaps most mainstream 'edm' but I can already tell from your comment that you won't be interested to learn about the higher end of electronic music (unless you were being sarcastic, if so I do apologize) . A lot of people seem to subscribe to this uninformed idea of electronic music but I can understand why. There is tons and tons of terrible edm that is just button pushing.
Of course it's all about perspective. Classical music folk as well as the musical academics seem to look down on all vernacular music as a whole which also can be understandable considering vernacular, by definition, is easier/less technical/less 'cultivated'/etc.
I am by no means a 'musical academic' or whatever but I always find it amusing that people who cannot break down some basic music theory vocabulary or even define what cultivated vs vernacular musics are feel they have the 'authority' to state literally anything about music in an objective context. Broadly, If you are uneducated about something all you can describe is your opinion and experiences with the thing. Ultimately that is not a valid voice unless the discussion is subjective. Not that my voice is by any means valid in a high level music discussion lol, it's not.
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u/wooferwolf Feb 08 '18
Yes, I was being very, very sarcastic. I make electronic music, and my comment was a joke referencing what I, unfortunately, hear all of the time...
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u/WettestMouth Feb 08 '18
:) Rad - I love tons of electronic music.
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u/wooferwolf Feb 08 '18
Nice. I play many different instruments and have dedicated the majority of my free time in life to composing and playing music. Learning to read and write music was difficult, but honestly, nothing has compared to the difficulty (and the absolute liberty) of composing electronic music. There is so much more than just being able to play an instrument or arrange music. Learning to craft and produce your art is an immense challenge. Learning to craft your own instruments is on an entirely different level. People that minimize the amount of effort and dedication it takes to be able to produce electronic music are entirely uninformed. Using an analog instrument like Elaine Radigue is using is even more difficult and requires an intimate, or at least deeply intuitive, understanding of the mechanics of sound. And, sir or madam, I would actually assert that even "mainstream edm" is a goddamn challenge to learn how to mix and master well. If you don't think so, then you have never tried. Anyone who tells you that making electronic music is easy, regardless if it is technical/obscure or mainstream, either (A) has no understanding of music; (B) plays an instrument and is frustrated by it; (C) plays an instrument very well but has never actually tried to produce anything professionally; or (D) is a fucking DJ and does nothing but play other peoples' music.
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u/obi21 Feb 08 '18
You spent too much time writing this reply, he wasn't worth it.. you see these guys anytime electronic music is mentioned outside the dedicated subs.
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u/LinoleumFulcrum Feb 07 '18
WTF is this tagged as "Ancient" History?
Someone needs to get their shit together.