Sunday 17 August 2014

Various Artists - Magyar Elektronikus Zene - Hungarian Electronic Music -1979- (LP, Hungaroton), Hungary


This is one of Hungary's greatest compilations of electronic avant-garde music together with this one which I will post later if it's not around somewhere. There are five Hungarian composers of electronic music present here: Zoltán Pongracz, Péter Eötvös, Iván Patachich and a combined piece by Máté Victor and Péter Winkler. A great piece on here is "Mese", meaning fairy tale, in which the sentence Egyszer volt, hol nem volt, meaning Once upon a time - the classic opening line of a fairy tale - is being processed looped and cut-up.

As you can guess electronic music from behind the iron curtain is quite an obscure thing. Nevertheless, many composers from the countries of the ex-eastern bloc had the possibility to travel to the west so they could study with people like Karlheinz Stockhausen or others. Usually these things were considered legitimate in the name of science, academy or high art. Also almost every big city in Eastern Europe had an experimental radio or television station studio in which they experimented with sound. From Warsaw to Bratislava to Beograd they all had their own kind of Radiophonic Workshop. Loads of cool Hungarian modern composed avant-garde stuff here.

This record has been uploaded to youtube, but has less than a hundred views and my copy happened to be in slightly better condition. This blog may lose a bit of its orthodoxy just to be able to keep on going with new material. Sometimes it might be available somewhere, but as a worse rip or practically not to be found. I will post some of these recordings by doing my own rips and I will shed my own light on those releases.

Get it HERE

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