Joris De Laet

'SEM' documents the difficult, challenging and deeply personal early works of autodidactic electroacoustic music composer Joris De Laet (Belgium, 1947) created at his Studio for Electronic Music and IPEM between 1972-1979. All material has been mastered from the original tapes and is previously unreleased. Guided by a radical sense of adventure and hard to pin down, these ten pieces are possibly best defined in terms of their contrasts - academic vs intuitive, modern composition vs free improvisation, acoustic vs electronic, sound vs noise - and the ensemble of contributing instrumentalists such as Karel Goeyvaerts (electronics), Pieter Kuyl (chapmanstick), Leo Verheyen (trombone), Paul Adriaenssens (flute and amplified objects), Maurice Verstuyft (flute). They range from from 10 - 27 minutes in length, covering atonal, free cacophony comparable with the work of Gottfried Michael Koenig, thru to slow, shimmering drones, plangent electro-acoustic space shaping, and beguiling vocal cut-ups comparable with Michel Chion or Léo Kupper, and much, much more in between, like the queered, otherworldly discord of 'Veranderlijk tot Mooi' or the pulsing, 21-minute proto-techno-scape, 'Scheldedichters met Natte Voeten' - possibly one of the purest, visionary techno precedents we've ever heard. Fans of otherworldly early European electronics will be in their element here.