MAIGUASHCA, MESIAS - Oeldorf 8

"First-ever official reissue of the Ecuadorian composer Mesías Maiguashca's stunning electroacoustic composition Oeldorf 8 on vinyl and CD. Mesías Maiguashca (b. December 24th, 1938 in Quito/Ecuador) is a composer of neue musik, especially electroacoustic music, who studied at the Conservatorio Nacional de Quito, at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY (1958-65), with Alberto Ginastera at the Instituto di Tella in Buenos Aires, at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne and, after a short return to Ecuador, attended the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt and the Fourth Cologne Courses for New Music in 1966-67 where he studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen. From 1968 to 1972, Maiguashca worked closely with Stockhausen in the Electronic Music Studio of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne and joined Stockhausen's ensemble for performances at the German Pavilion at the Expo '70 in Osaka. In 1971 he became a founding member of the Oeldorf Group of composers and performers. The Oeldorf Group, named after the small village 40 km away from Cologne where they lived and worked in a rented farmhouse where they set up their own studio for electronic music and studio productions, was a musicians' collective active during the 1970s. Thanks to a long-standing contact with the Westdeutscher Rundfund, the core members of the Oeldorf Group (Peter Eötvös, Joachim Krist, Mesías Maiguashca, and Gaby Schumacher) received commissions for compositions, invitations to perform in the Musik der Zeit concert series, as well as having many of their summer concerts recorded for the late-night broadcasts of WDR3. One of these commissioned compositions was Oeldorf 8: a retrospective portrait of the Oeldorf Group consisting of a series of ten short pieces for four instrumentalists (clarinet, violin, cello, electric organ/synthesizer) and tape which may be played either simultaneously or continuously without a break. It premiered in 1974 at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse and was released on LP two years later. Conceived as a sonic diary with an edge to encompass radical electronic synthesis, the 48-minute composition is a thing of wonder; from the outset, Maiguashca's spoken introduction of the players and concept gets slowly eroded by errant, pointillist electronic sound -- which then lets loose for ten minutes before a swarm of slowly rising held tones comes to the fore. On the second side, the acoustic sounds are annihilated by a rising pulse-wave drone, an almost Roland Kayn-esque climax of raw oscillator gristle. Remastered by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. LP version comes on 180 gram vinyl; gatefold sleeve; includes download code." - Karlrecords.