Deluxe Double LP
Typically smartly presented dbl LP from Urpa i musell of highly obscure but unusually prolific electronic music pioneer Joan Saura. Àlbum, first released on CD only in 1998, was the only album to be issued under his own name, though he worked tirelessly for and with others as part of a Catalonian avant garde scene that stretched across dance and theatre, improv and various experimental groups of varying degrees of notoriety. This 16 track document is testament to such broad activity, incorporating pioneering sampling practices, post-modern/neo-classical arrangements (comparable, say, with the output of Mills College and Lovely Music), and unusual electronic vistas that would have felt very alien and out of sync in 1998 that saw sampling as a club-oriented aesthetic. The label press release gives no indication, but I wonder if this music was written and collected over an extended period of time, such is the range of ideas and explorations, the sound of an artist doing an extended deep dive into their various inspirations and interests. Lots of angles to come at here, but the stand out moments for me are tracks like 'Visita A Klänge', a sample heavy collage of weird dissonances that you can equally imagine appealing to Zoviet France as seeing Richard D. James falling head over the heels down the stairs in pursuit of. Contemporaries in 1998? Hard to call exactly, though i'm sure the likes of Spring Heel Jack, Stephen Stapleton and the outer edges of the Isolationism/Mille Plateaux universe would be too turned off at the association. Not a cheap record admittedly, but then again, where else are you going to source sounds exactly like this?
FFO: Zoviet France, Nurse With Wound, Spring Heel Jack, David Rosenboom
