Nicolae Brînduș

Nicolae Brînduș was born in Bucharest in 1935 and swiftly matriculated through his studies in Piano & Composition at the National University of Music before embarking on the life-changing seminars at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt throughout the late 60s & early 70s; even working at Ircam for a spell in the mid-1980s. How this formative music, composed & recorded largely during his Darmstadt phase, has remained so relatively unknown is insane to me; it has all of the hallmarks of the exact configuration of elements that we hold dear: excessive use of gain, tape-speed effects and dozens of sound-on-sound layerings of acoustic instrumentation, errant electronics, & even extra-musical materials. There's something just so indefinably off-the-rails about it all, and this extends through all four pieces; careening, energetic tape assemblage with little to no compare. 

These are absolutely spellbinding, clangorous pile-ups rivaling Anestis Logothetis at his most wild & woolly, the discovery of which led to a thorough investigation down through the deepest recesses / wormholes of the Electrecord catalogue, which unearthed a veritable treasure trove of amazing work, all virtually unknown outside of Romania, with several titles yet to come across this 23x sub-series. Hold on to your hats...