Étant Donnés

Early unreleased tape recordings from 1977 to 1979. First part in small series of limited triple vinyl boxes, featuring all early Etant Donnes recordings, in a super limited edition of 90 copies. Etant Donnes are French brothers Eric & Marc Hurtado who take their name from the Marcel Duchamp peep-show like art exhibit of the same name.  The duo have been releasing music since the late 70s, several with big name guests including Genesis P-Orridge, Alan Vega and Michael Gira.  The brothers Hurtado create a fittingly eerie, somber and desolate soundscape as backdrop to Gira's reading and singing (in German) of Trakl's equally somber poetic text.  The music is of an ambient / environmental nature with drones, washes, noise, rumblings, bits of percussion, found sounds and Mark Cunningham's gentle trumpet playing

Their soundworks are constructed through the manipulation of natural sounds, using the variation of velocity and intensity of the recordings ,the cutting and splicing of tape. Etant Donnes‘s compositions are passionate and extremely communicative, their music and words are minimalist just like the writings and chants of the religious mystics sufi, trying to recover the virginity of the words and sounds, they map new territories and establisch their own personal rules, their attention is concentrated on the symphonic cacophonie organisation of disorganized found sounds, using magical rythms only directed by cosmic rules