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Best of 2018

Stephan Mathieu

Radiance (12CD Box)

Label: Schwebung

Format: 12xCD Box

Genre: Electronic

Out of stock

**few copies back in stock, very last around** It hardly needs to be said that the context of experimental music is defined by incredibly ambitious efforts. But there’s ambitious, and then there’s ambitious. The German composer and musician, Stephan Mathieu, might have taken the cake. Back in 2016, he began issuing his sprawling Radiance project, the culmination of a decade of work, in the end amounting to twelve thematically linked album length pieces, built around the concepts of stasis, unfolding time, sustained frequencies, deep distension, and immersion, which, in their totality, were joined as a single work of totemic scale - 764 minutes of incredible organised sound. Like all great art, Radiance is the culmination of passions founded in the real world - Mathieu’s long standing interests and focusses as a composer, as much as his life as fan and collector of obscure musical instruments and rare 78 RPM records. It is a link to history and art as homage - a great many of its pieces dedicated to others, from the instrument maker Arnold Dolmetsch to artists as diverse as Frank Wright, Morton Feldman, and Alvin Lucier, joined as a work entirely of its time. A space were the ideas of art meet with science, formed in the sphere of conceptual sound, Radiance could be seen as reimagining of optimisms of the modernist age, pushed forward as a different vision of what might be.

An evolving, droning masterwork, realised through a vast range of sources - 78s, voice, gong, piano, zither, shortwave radio, strings, percussion, and a great deal more, Radiance distills a vast range of musical touchstones, from Renaissance music, varies forms of early 20th century musics, to multiple threads of the historic avant-garde, sculpting sounds and structures entirely focused on a future yet to be seen. In the tradition of Feldman and Roland Kayn, a brilliant, immersive, slowly evolving expanse of sound and artistry, the totality of Mathieu’s Radiance ultimately became a stunning 12 CD box set, issued in a tiny edition of 150 copies which quickly sold out. We’re thrilled to announce that, in an edition offered exclusively to SoundOhm, we have 50 of 80 copies made, which are available now, but definitely won’t last for long. Bound to regarded as one of most ambitious and mesmerising works of our time. Don’t sleep on this one. It’s not available anywhere else and is bound to gone in a blink.


 

Details
Cat. number: Schwebung Étendue I-XII
Year: 2018