Rafael Aponte Ledée

A quartet of beguiling Electronic & Tape Music figures from Puerto Rican composer Rafael Aponte Ledée, one of few operating there during the "Golden Era", consisting of pieces completed in the island's first Electro-Acoustic studio between 1974 & 1978. Starting with the ring-modulated & spring reverb-laden "Elvira Gimenez (O Al Otro Lado De Tica...)" things get off to a great start, getting into the same junkyard-sphere as Xenakis' "Bohor" in in its aggregate form of clockwork-innards & shifting, bell-like klang. The first side ends with the jump-cut slown-down bells & interstitial, distant choir of "Cuidese De Los Angeles Que Caen", eerily reminiscent of the kind of pause-button antics of Michael Sahl's "Tropes on the Salve Regina". "Streptomicyne" wraps a chamber arrangement for prepared piano, floating bit-reed clarinet embouchures, and, eventually, a dry transliteration of Rilke texts & pointillist percussion into a coherent whole. Finally, "Los Huevos De Pandora" weaves gorgeous, overdubbed clarinet waft into a series of interjections of high-end synth blat, eventually reaching a fever pitch of electronic / acoustic intermingling, ending with a strange stretch of plunderphonic Puertorriqueñan folk-forms. An excellent set, shedding light on the otherwise undocumented early Puerto Rican Electronic Music community.