ETANT DONNES - Tapes 1977-1983

"6LP leather box with DVD. The box provides all of Etant Donnes avant-garde tapes released between 1977 and 1983 on the famous French BainTotal-Label Recordings including: La Vue, Lopposition, Letoile Au Front, Ceux Quon Aime - Ce Que Je Hais, Cinq Portes Soudees, Les Cents Jours Clairs. The release also contains a DVD with live performances of Etant Donnes over the last three decades. The music of this Etant Donnés first period (1977-1983) boxset describes a rite of passage from mortality to divinity, a powerful but hidden passion craving beauty and burning love that can be conquered only by another form of secret pain, that of losing yourself in the cosmos and becoming part of the muddy streams of distant stars. Their soundworks are constructed through the manipulation of natural sounds, using the variation of velocity and intensity of the recordings, the cutting and splicing of tape. Etant Donnes compositions are passionate and brutally communicative, their music and words are minimalist just like the writings and chants of the religious mystics Sufi, trying to recover the virginity of the words and sounds, they map new territories and establish their own personal rules. These first tracks contains all the brutal collages of found sounds investigating nuances of sounds that at times verges upon silence, the inspired and enraptured meeting with earths natural forces, an homage to the shadow of night, to the vineyard and the golden door. In these first six LPs Etant Donnés create their own brand of total audio expression using belches and punches, their attention is concentrated on the symphonic cacophonie organisation of disorganized found sounds, using magical rhythms only directed by cosmic rules. A perfect way of organizing natural sounds that obeys fundamental principles that everyone wishes to convey, a music able to tear down walls and build a universal comprehension, a cosmic law of beauty, a magical and alchemical act of poetry." - Vinyl-On-Demand