condition (record/cover): NM / NM (still in shrink)  Ishuma / Chant D'Amours on La Voce Del Padrone pairs Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux and Serge Garant, two Canadian composers whose presence in this French-focused catalog reminds us that Francophone music extended far beyond the Hexagon. Saint-Marcoux studied with Pierre Schaeffer and the GRM; Garant founded the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec.

Ishuma takes its title from Inuit language, Saint-Marcoux's interest in indigenous culture predating by decades the postcolonial turn in contemporary music. The piece treats electronic sounds as Arctic landscape, vast frozen spaces rendered in magnetic tape. Garant's Chant D'Amours offers contrast: more traditionally "French" in its lineage, serialist technique applied to lyrical ends that Pierre Boulez might have found too expressive.

The Italian pressing on La Voce Del Padrone (EMI's peninsular branch) demonstrates how these records circulated across borders, French-Canadian music pressed in Milan for European distribution. The cultural geography grows complex: Québécois composers trained in Paris, released in Italy, heard who knows where. Borders meant less than shared language and shared commitment to sonic experiment.