condition (record/cover): NM / NM

With original innersleeve. | A historic document. The debut release on Edition RZ - the Berlin imprint founded by curator and art critic Robert Zank in 1982 to document the local Inventionen Festival - arrives in the form of four electroacoustic works by Argentine composer Ricardo Mandolini, recorded between 1979 and 1981 across a circuit of premier European studios: EMS in Stockholm, IPEM in Ghent, and the Technical University of Berlin.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1950 and trained first under Guillermo Graetzer and Francisco Kröpfl, Mandolini arrived in Köln in 1977 on a DAAD scholarship to study electronic composition under Hans Ulrich Humpert at the Musikhochschule - a path that would carry him through the most significant electroacoustic centers of the continent before settling permanently in France. The philosophy underlying these four works is one of radical economy: a reduction of electroacoustic music to its skeletal core, each sound chosen for its irreplaceable quality rather than its spectacular effect. Juego de Marionetas moves through low-amplitude textures and slow-rising architectures; El Cuaderno del Alquimista navigates the alchemical space between electronic grain and concrete residue; Canción de Madera y Agua closes the set with something approaching lyricism in the machine. Structure, dramatization, and the evocative weight of precisely chosen sound are never sacrificed.

As the inaugural release of Edition RZ - a label that would go on to document Luigi Nono, David Tudor, Iannis Xenakis, and decades of the Berlin avant-garde - Elektro Akustische-Musik occupies a singular position in the archaeology of European electroacoustic music. A starting point and a statement of intent. Edition RZ, ERZ 1, 1982. Rare.