Knud Viktor | Images ~ Ambiances | CDr

Creel Pone | usa

*** distro restock ***

These are the Last remaining copies from the label - sold out at source!

This reissue documents Knud Viktor’s only two releases on record – Images and Ambiances – both released in 1972 on the french label L’Oiseau Musicien. These records have long been out of print and are hereby made available again, gathering the two separate albums on this double-release.

The utmost care has gone into creating a reproduction that is as faithful as possible to the original works. These have been transferred from the original analog master tapes and have not been remastered to any other extent than to prepare them for the vinyl reproduction. Thus, Knud Viktor’s pieces appear with the same degree of tape hiss, hum and other “artefacts” related to his aesthetics, compositional process and tools.

All the works on this release was composed by Knud Viktor in and around his home in Luberon, in the south of France.

October 2009 release; Mr P.C. C.P. back in action with his / their 88th title, doing justice to this pair of 1972 “Private-Press” issues by the Danish composer Knud Viktor. I’ve long held these two sides in high esteem as they’re a gorgeous extension of the Musique Concrète tradition - pretty much unparalleled then & since in that the economy of source material(s) used vs. the extended, flowing takes extruded surpass even concept-oriented pieces such as Hugh LeCaine’s “Dripsody” in pure tonal-variation bliss.

The first disc / LP offers a series of shorter vignettes, mostly involving raw water-drip sounds fed through a vicious cycle of tape-delay, vari-speed controls, and feedback-oriented processing - the results are as transfixing as they are impressive. The second disc / LP works two much longer studies, each repeating 3 times, ultra-effective as listener-transport mechanisms.

Perhaps it’s the occasional use of birdsong - or the appearance of these two on the Jean C. Roche -curated L’Oiseau Musicien label - but I hear parallels to Jim Fassett’s “Symphony of the Birds” in some of the transformations - but this is far from a purely academic /demonstrative work - it’s deeply immersive and clearly the fruits of many a month of careful assembly.

https://knudviktor.bandcamp.com/album/ambiances-images