Françoise Barrière, Christian Clozier

One of the true Musique Concrète Holy Grails - alongside Jacques Lejeune's "Fantasmes Ou L'Histoire De Blanche-Neige" & the Jean Schwarz / Jacques Lejeune / Phillip Beetz "Des Musiques Des Sons" set - is this privately issued 3LP boxed set from the husband & wife team of Françoise Barrière & Christian Clozier, consisting of one extended piece by each; Barrière's "Ritratto di Giovane" & Clozier's "Symphonie Pour Un Enfant Seul." Barrière's six-part "Ritratto Di Giovane" - "Le Vieux Clown, "Et Le Jour", "Et La Nuit", "La Leçon De Musique", "Samba Compiégnoise", & "A La Jeunesse" - fills up the first LP with the howls & squeals of the titular infant dotting the rather noisy exchange of field recordings, high-end synthesizer blat, and discordant prepared piano scrape, all lending to a transfixing whole. Similarly, Clozier"s "Symphonie for a Child Alone" stretches out over four side-length suites - "Adagio Adage", "Andante Infernal", "Menuet Tudor", & "Final Extrémiste" - with the sounds of machine-gun strafe, plundered televised political speech, and rising electronic squawk, moving about in an unhurried pace so rare in this world of concise, micro-edits. This Creel Pone replica of the stickered, but otherwise unadorned white-box includes a reproduction of the lavender insert & all three LPs neatly organized into two discs; one each per piece. This music is an absolute joy to hear & behold, offering as extended a take on the original-era home-listening Musique Concrète spec as is extant.