Eliane Radigue

Two CDs, two hours and twenty minutes. Five chants: Mila's Song in the Rain, Song of the Path Guides, Elimination of Desire, Symbols for Yogic Experience and Mila's Journey Inspired by a Dream. Made in 1983 at Eliane Radigue's studio in Paris on an ARP 2500, onto magnetic tape.

Milarepa was born in western Tibet around 1040 into a prosperous family. When his father died his aunt and uncle took everything, and his mother sent him to learn sorcery so that he could take revenge. He did, and killed a great many people. What he did next is why he is remembered. He went to Marpa the Translator to have the karma undone, and Marpa refused to teach him until he had built a tower and demolished it, three times over, before setting him to build a fourth. Only then did Marpa hand over the tantric teachings and send him to meditate alone in caves, where he stayed for years. He left almost nothing written. What survives is his teaching in verse, sung, and gathered as the Hundred Thousand Songs.

Radigue arrived at him from her own direction. In 1974, after the premiere of Adnos I at Mills College, French students there introduced her to Tibetan Buddhism; back in Paris she took it up and gave three years to practice and nothing else, having stopped composing. It was her teacher, Tsuglak Mawe Wangchuk, who sent her back to the music.

The texts are read twice, in English by Robert Ashley and in Tibetan by Lama Kunga Rinpoche, who is also their translator: his versions, made with Brian Cutillo, were published as Drinking the Mountain Stream. Radigue recorded Ashley herself at 10 Beach Street in New York. Lama Kunga was recorded in Oakland by Laetitia Sonami and Maggi Payne. The voices are not laid over the electronics, they sit inside them at the same distance as everything else, and the drone neither illustrates the words nor moves aside for them.

The last chant was first performed on 2 April 1984 at the French House of Columbia University in New York. The complete work was given afterwards at the Experimental Intermedia Foundation, which was Phill Niblock's, a few records earlier in this selection.

Radigue died in Paris on 23 February 2026, at ninety-four.