Label: Musique Brut – BRU 001 Format: Vinyl, LP Country: UK Released: 1986 Genre: Electronic Style: Experimental
Mysterious, otherworldly and surprisingly welllll ahead of its time cult release from the founder of seminal Industrial band SPK turned pioneering field recordist / soundtracker Graeme Revell on this debut solo ‘The Insect Musicians’.Reportedly the first album produced solely using a computer, the story goes that Revell spent two years between ’84 - ’85 travelling between Australia, Europe, Indonesia, Africa and North America recording, sampling and negotiating the copyright for the sounds of insects, which were then metamorphosed, augmented and digitally manipulated from their source using the Fairlight Computer Music Instrument.The results as you might imagine are unlike anything else - with the unusual timbres, textures and rhythms from the entomological source source rendered into a variety of different moods and ‘songs’.Revell extracts / manipulates surprising low end frequencies from Beetles, Cicadas, Crickets and more into the unexpectedly club-ready ‘La Danse des Ténèbres (Dance of Shadows)’ which rearranges the natural patterns of the insect calls into a catchy, polyrhythmic score, whilst other moments reveal a surprising sense of human emotion - melancholy, sadness or a sense of longing from the combined chorus of the little creatures.But as explained in the in-depth field notes within, the joy (and irony) of ‘The Insect Musicians’ is how now only through the use of technology we can get closer to nature.All-timer!!(NM/NM - with in-depth booklet!)..
Tracklist Alpha A1 Nocturne (On An Oriental Theme) A2 The Sleeping Sickness A3 Melancholia A4 La Danse Des Ténèbres = Dance Of Shadows A5 Variation On The 'Sakura' (Japanese Traditional) Beta B1 Nature Morte = Still Life B2 Balinese Twilights B3 Phobia (An Australian Theme) B4 Invaders Of The Heart B5 Et Spiritus Sanctus
