Following on from the ambitious heights of their recent collections dedicated to the neglected, visionary electroacoustic composers, Nicole Lachartre and Robert Fesler, Metaphon returns with "Les Années 1967-1984", an absolutely astounding x4LP box set, attending to a startling body of 14 phenomenal electronic and electro-acoustic / tape works by the French composer Fernand Vandenbogaerde. An absolute revelation and truly engrossing listen that brings a sinfully overlooked figure in the history of electroacoustic music into the center of our consciousness and helps to entirely rewrite our understanding of that practice in time, we're in absolute awe of the incredible work that Metaphon is doing and can’t sing its praises enough.

Working at a slow, meticulous pace, for a decade and a half, Metaphon - the Brussels based imprint run by Timo Van Luijk, Greg Jacobs and Marc Wroblewski - has continuously illuminated fascinating trajectories within a number of historically neglected contexts of electronic music and sound art. Primarily focused on work produced in Belgium - with their own criteria of personal taste guiding them well - they’ve produced an incredibly important body of albums that endeavour to respect and support radically forward thinking music and those who make it. The last year or so has witnessed Metaphon delve into increasingly more ambitious ground with some killer releases by Jacques Bekaert; Toshi Ichiyanagi, Michael Ranta, and Takehisa Kosugi; Johannes Fritsch; Jan Bruyndonckx, and Rolf Gehlhaar, as well as upping their game to unprecedented heights with the release of Nicole Lachartre’s stunning 3LP box, “Mundus”, the first ever release to illuminate the life and work of the French electronic and electroacoustic pioneer, and “μP RPF78”, a towering X4 LP box which is the first collection to ever explore the work of the incredible electronic music of the Belgian composer Robert Fesler. Now they return with yet another equally ambitious and generous gesture, “Les Années 1967-1984”, an absolutely amazing x4LP box set, attending to a startling body of 14 phenomenal electronic and electro-acoustic works by the French composer Fernand Vandenbogaerde, realized between 1967 and 1984. Only the second release ever dedicated to Vandenbogaerde (the first in more than two decades) and by far the most comprehensive, it’s a towering revelation of the highest order that overflows with mind-melting sounds.

Born in 1946, Fernand Vandenbogaerde initially studied mathematics and science, before shifting his considerable energies toward avant-garde and experimental, studying at the Conservatoire de Roubaix and with Jean-Etienne Marie, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Schaeffer, György Ligeti, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Bruno Maderna. During the late 1960s and 70s he studied at Groupe de Recherche Musicale de l’O.R.T.F. (G.R.M./ Service de la Recherche), and obtained his first musical commission there, “Quadripôle Actif”, which was produced in 1971, as well as writing and publishing numerous theoretical texts during this period, notably on Mathematical Music and on the works of Iannis Xenakis, as well as helping to found the famed institute of electroacoustic music, Groupe de Musique Expérimentale de Bourges (GMEB), and then setting up one of the first electroacoustic composition classes at the Conservatoire Municipal de Musique de Pantin in 1972, as well as their studio, which he ran for the next decade. It is from the period highlighted above, that Metaphon’s X4LP collection dedicated to Vandenbogaerde’s work, “Les Années 1967-1984”, focuses our attention.

While over the course of his career Vandenbogaerde has composed for orchestra, instrumental and chamber ensembles, and hybrid tape and electro-acoustic configurations, the 14 pieces comprised by “Les Années 1967-1984” - all but one of which are previously unreleased - are primarily meticulously recorded and produced, timbre oriented tape works. Distinct from many of his peers in the field of electro-acoustic music, Vandenbogaerde states: “What determines my pieces, at least all the ones in this collection, is that it’s the material that dictates me, that will predetermine the form”.

Churning and radical, pushing further distillation of Vandenbogaerde’s efforts across the collection is a fairly persistent and careful retention of the sound sources (very often clearly instrumental) committed to tape, making his interventions and structural choices (the hand of the artist) that much more clear and transparent. Very often spacious and open - each sound and its interactions with others taking on a profound sense of scale and gravity - as the collection progresses, the composer steadily pushes toward greater states of abstraction and diffusion of his material elements, notable high points being the compositions 'Modifications III' and the intriguing trilogy 'Drei Nachdenken über Hymnen an die Nacht’, which fascinatingly integrate micro tonal scales conceived by Mexican composer Julian Carrillo.