J.D. Emmanuel – Electronic Minimal Music 1979-83 – 3LP

The recent rediscovery of J.D. Emmanuel by critics and audience, and his comeback to underground scene from 2010 was crucial to reweave the development of electronic music in the early Eighties. This new publication cast new light on his first activity of composing and performing electronic music during 1979-83, experiments totally unreleased and never before published on vinyl.

Certainly seminal minimal works such as “Four Organs or Violin Phase” by Steve Reich, “A Rainbow in Curved Air” by Terry Riley as well Cluster, Harmonia or Peter Michael Hamel’s works of the early Seventies had a decisive impact on the Emmanuel’s debut. However, since the beginning he proves to reshape and reformulate the lymph of his sources of inspiration with a consolidated maturity and accurate vision unparalleled. His poetry it’s  closely tied to the will to expand consciousness and explore his altered states, but more than a “cosmic courier” he rather appear as “courier of soul and heart” and “a student of metaphysical Nature of the Universe”.

Magician of a incredible variety of analog keyboards J.D. conceives the sound as dynamic translation of forces and organic fluid expanding flows of energy mass. The cyclicity of patterns and phrases refer to minimalist iteration but his music has little in commune with something purely mathematical; but also using an approach to improvisation filtered by his interest in jazz and in the temporal expansion of rock-jams, harmonic sections are charged with a intimate spontaneity and freedom without boundaries.

These 14 “vaporous drawnings”, released in a deluxe edition with photos, writings and digital download code donate a primordial state of grace to the listener, in parallel to contemporary ancestral work “Wizards” in 1982 (containing two tracks that was originally included in “Wizards”, but replaced by other tracks just before the final master).

Black Sweat Records

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