Argentinian composer Horacio Vaggione is not one of the best-known names in electronic music, but this is not for lack of productivity or the quality of his work. His career has taken him to renowned Parisian electroacoustic institutions such as IRCAM, founded largely by Pierre Boulez, and the Groupe de recherches musicales (GRM), founded by Pierre Schaeffer, which is one of the reasons for this selection on the label Recollection GRM. Vaggione, now 81, came to Europe at the end of the 1960s and moved to France via Spain, where he has lived since 1978. His music includes a number of compositions for acoustic instruments combined with electronic sounds, most of which are computer generated. These four electro-acoustic works feature acousmatic approaches, where the source of what is heard is not always clear, and granular synthesis, broadly speaking, based on short micro-samples. The music is characterised by a kind of crackling that sounds both clean and dryly dirty, resulting in very delicate sounds that are both concrete and abstract. This is very much in the spirit of musique concrète, which is also at the heart of Vaggione’s music, albeit in an advanced form. Demanding, yet very entertaining.
Robert Cahen
La Nef Des Fous
Recollection GRM