The third installment of Editions MEGO's Portraits GRM series - Statistique Synthétique / Teum (the Silvery Slit), a split LP from Hecker and Okkyung Lee - is an absolute triumph. Two stunning sides of textural intervention and bristling sonority prove that there's as much incredible work emerging from GRM as at any point in the past, and firmly root both of these artists at the forefront of the mind.

Mid way through 2020, Editions MEGO launched Portraits GRM, a new series of LPs building on the fertile ground established by their stunning, long-standing Recollection GRM series. Among their most exciting projects to date, rather than the historical artefacts mined by its predecessor, Portraits GRM casts its gaze into the present and future of Groupe de Recherches Musicales, presenting recent works commissioned by the legendary Paris electronic music studio and collective, created by some of the most visionary artists working in the contemporary landscape of experimental music. After a brilliant start with works by Jim O’Rourke, Lucy Railton, and Max Eilbacher, Mego is back with their third instalment of the series.

At first thought, Florian Hecker and Okkyung Lee might not seem like an intuitive pairing to occupy opposing sides of a split LP, but Statistique Synthétique / Teum (the Silvery Slit) quickly proves to be an inspired bit of curatorial genius. Each of these artists has played a seminal role within corresponding, ambitious territories of experimental music for more than two decades; Hecker bridging the worlds of performance and installation - sculpting delicate expanses of electro-acoustic and computer-based sonority - while Lee is among the foremost acoustic improvisors and cellists working today. As each artist issues remarkable statements of intertwining texture and delicate harmonics across their respective sides, they emerge as deeply conversant complements, exploring different trajectories and palettes within the same broad universe of sound.

Hecker’s contribution to the third instalment of Portraits GRM, Statistique Synthétique, seamlessly joins the artist’s enduring explorations of space, time and perception through the organisation of auditory events, and the evocation of sensation, memory, and subjective association. Built from a palette of computer-generated sound and resynthesized field recordings made over more than a decade in various corners of the globe, bristling textures and tonal interventions give way to an imagistic, expansive sonorous landscape within which intricate detail aggressively shifts and collides. Taking subtle nods to the post-war avant-garde gestures of synthesis and computer music that made studios like GRM what they are - issuing spectres at the tipping point between utopian and dystopian - Hecker pushes forward toward glimpses of the future of this remarkable territory of exploration across an engrossing single-sided work.

Last year, Okkyung Lee made waves with Yeo-Neun, her incredible LP for Shelter Press. Known for her astounding improvisational skill on cello, positioning her as one of the most sought-after players in the global landscape of experimental music, the album plumbed deeply personal territories of melodic space. Following on its heels, Lee’s work for the third instalment of Portraits GRM, Teum (the Silvery Slit), encounters her, once again, pushing forward into new, intimate territories of emotive sonority.

An electroacoustic work, Teum (the Silvery Slit) is an overture within a game of multiplications, fragmentations, duplications, that bridges computer music with the textural utterances of Lee’s striking work on the cello. Eroding the perceptible boundaries between auditory source and interventions of process - acoustic or synthetic - the work weaves a singular, free-standing world where imagination and narrative possibilities take hold. Immersive and striking across every evolution, Teum (the Silvery Slit) is an absolutely stunning piece of work that leaves you yearning for more and, as ever, with the unavoidable truth that Okkyung Lee is among the most important artists working today, and that she keeps getting better with every turn.

It’s impossible to pick a favourite - the first 2 volumes were as good as records come - but Hecker and Okkyung Lee’s offering from the third instalment is impossible to ignore. Truly stunning work on both their parts.