Bernard Parmegiani & François Bayle
Divine Comédie
Bernard Parmegiani & François Bayle
Divine Comédie
Boomkat Product Review:
First ever complete edition of Bernard Parmegiani & François Bayle’s electroacoustic epic inspired by Dante's 'Divine Comedy', the duo consolidating their talents and reimagining the enduring Medieval poem as an intensely visual tapestry of garbled words, tape-mangled squelches and crystalline drones.
Based on a narration of Dante's text from French singer Michel Hermon, 'Divine Comédie', like the source material itself, is split into three segments, with Parmegiani tackling 'Inferno', Bayle handling 'Purgatory' and both composers teaming up to figure out 'Paradise'. Parmegiani was quick to decide on his choice, and wrote his hour-long descent into hell between 1971 and '72, representing the realm's pain, punishment and contradiction with searing, drill-like synth whirrs, squealing feedback, warbling oscillations, doomy choral chants and ASMR-rich insectoid scratches. He keeps Hermon's voice relatively clean throughout, letting it anchor the soundscape but muddying the narrative by chopping extracts from the session and placing them "haphazardly in the music". It works chillingly well: Parmegiani wants to uncover hell's labyrinthine logic, and lays out an architecture that's both sonically terrifying and energetically absurd. The acrobatic processes he demonstrated on albums like 'La Création Du Monde' and 'De Natura Sonorum' are given additional shadows here, cast into darkness with spine-tingling reverb and doom-y early renaissance aesthetic callbacks. It's a surreal, mind-altering radio play, of a sort, cut into by Parmegiani's serrated noise and disorientating ambience.
Bayle's reply, written in 1972, is very different. The French acousmatic music pioneer plays more freely with Hermon's voice, using it to balance his cold, minimalist synthwork and concrète orchestral distortions. To Bayle, purgatory is bleak and almost serene, with glimmers of hope seeping in from the far corners. Hermon's words are left to ring out clearly, before being turned into unintelligible whispers, echoes and whispers that dart around Bayle's fragmented assemblage of futuristic suspended drones and ferric instrumentation. Hauntingly archaic string plucks and horn blasts crumple the timeline, and Bayle creates drama with chaotic outbursts of noise, returning to Harmon's voice as a salve that drops us back into the narrative for a few moments. And on the 22-minute collaboration 'Paradis', Parmegiani and Bayle steer us slowly towards luminescence. Harmon's narration is absent from this one, and the two composers overlay their ascetic electronics, working relatively minimally at first, criss-crossing high-pitched, quivering whines that suggest a relief from the punishing fires of hell and the chilly transparency of purgatory. In time, the duo melt in celestial vibraphone chimes and jagged accordion sounds that throb into a light-headed climax backed by the faintest traces of choirs in the distance.
There's little else quite like it - maybe Henning Christiansen's genius 'OP.176 PENTHESILEA' - so trust us you're in for a treat.
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Boomkat Product Review:
First ever complete edition of Bernard Parmegiani & François Bayle’s electroacoustic epic inspired by Dante's 'Divine Comedy', the duo consolidating their talents and reimagining the enduring Medieval poem as an intensely visual tapestry of garbled words, tape-mangled squelches and crystalline drones.
Based on a narration of Dante's text from French singer Michel Hermon, 'Divine Comédie', like the source material itself, is split into three segments, with Parmegiani tackling 'Inferno', Bayle handling 'Purgatory' and both composers teaming up to figure out 'Paradise'. Parmegiani was quick to decide on his choice, and wrote his hour-long descent into hell between 1971 and '72, representing the realm's pain, punishment and contradiction with searing, drill-like synth whirrs, squealing feedback, warbling oscillations, doomy choral chants and ASMR-rich insectoid scratches. He keeps Hermon's voice relatively clean throughout, letting it anchor the soundscape but muddying the narrative by chopping extracts from the session and placing them "haphazardly in the music". It works chillingly well: Parmegiani wants to uncover hell's labyrinthine logic, and lays out an architecture that's both sonically terrifying and energetically absurd. The acrobatic processes he demonstrated on albums like 'La Création Du Monde' and 'De Natura Sonorum' are given additional shadows here, cast into darkness with spine-tingling reverb and doom-y early renaissance aesthetic callbacks. It's a surreal, mind-altering radio play, of a sort, cut into by Parmegiani's serrated noise and disorientating ambience.
Bayle's reply, written in 1972, is very different. The French acousmatic music pioneer plays more freely with Hermon's voice, using it to balance his cold, minimalist synthwork and concrète orchestral distortions. To Bayle, purgatory is bleak and almost serene, with glimmers of hope seeping in from the far corners. Hermon's words are left to ring out clearly, before being turned into unintelligible whispers, echoes and whispers that dart around Bayle's fragmented assemblage of futuristic suspended drones and ferric instrumentation. Hauntingly archaic string plucks and horn blasts crumple the timeline, and Bayle creates drama with chaotic outbursts of noise, returning to Harmon's voice as a salve that drops us back into the narrative for a few moments. And on the 22-minute collaboration 'Paradis', Parmegiani and Bayle steer us slowly towards luminescence. Harmon's narration is absent from this one, and the two composers overlay their ascetic electronics, working relatively minimally at first, criss-crossing high-pitched, quivering whines that suggest a relief from the punishing fires of hell and the chilly transparency of purgatory. In time, the duo melt in celestial vibraphone chimes and jagged accordion sounds that throb into a light-headed climax backed by the faintest traces of choirs in the distance.
There's little else quite like it - maybe Henning Christiansen's genius 'OP.176 PENTHESILEA' - so trust us you're in for a treat.
Boomkat Product Review:
First ever complete edition of Bernard Parmegiani & François Bayle’s electroacoustic epic inspired by Dante's 'Divine Comedy', the duo consolidating their talents and reimagining the enduring Medieval poem as an intensely visual tapestry of garbled words, tape-mangled squelches and crystalline drones.
Based on a narration of Dante's text from French singer Michel Hermon, 'Divine Comédie', like the source material itself, is split into three segments, with Parmegiani tackling 'Inferno', Bayle handling 'Purgatory' and both composers teaming up to figure out 'Paradise'. Parmegiani was quick to decide on his choice, and wrote his hour-long descent into hell between 1971 and '72, representing the realm's pain, punishment and contradiction with searing, drill-like synth whirrs, squealing feedback, warbling oscillations, doomy choral chants and ASMR-rich insectoid scratches. He keeps Hermon's voice relatively clean throughout, letting it anchor the soundscape but muddying the narrative by chopping extracts from the session and placing them "haphazardly in the music". It works chillingly well: Parmegiani wants to uncover hell's labyrinthine logic, and lays out an architecture that's both sonically terrifying and energetically absurd. The acrobatic processes he demonstrated on albums like 'La Création Du Monde' and 'De Natura Sonorum' are given additional shadows here, cast into darkness with spine-tingling reverb and doom-y early renaissance aesthetic callbacks. It's a surreal, mind-altering radio play, of a sort, cut into by Parmegiani's serrated noise and disorientating ambience.
Bayle's reply, written in 1972, is very different. The French acousmatic music pioneer plays more freely with Hermon's voice, using it to balance his cold, minimalist synthwork and concrète orchestral distortions. To Bayle, purgatory is bleak and almost serene, with glimmers of hope seeping in from the far corners. Hermon's words are left to ring out clearly, before being turned into unintelligible whispers, echoes and whispers that dart around Bayle's fragmented assemblage of futuristic suspended drones and ferric instrumentation. Hauntingly archaic string plucks and horn blasts crumple the timeline, and Bayle creates drama with chaotic outbursts of noise, returning to Harmon's voice as a salve that drops us back into the narrative for a few moments. And on the 22-minute collaboration 'Paradis', Parmegiani and Bayle steer us slowly towards luminescence. Harmon's narration is absent from this one, and the two composers overlay their ascetic electronics, working relatively minimally at first, criss-crossing high-pitched, quivering whines that suggest a relief from the punishing fires of hell and the chilly transparency of purgatory. In time, the duo melt in celestial vibraphone chimes and jagged accordion sounds that throb into a light-headed climax backed by the faintest traces of choirs in the distance.
There's little else quite like it - maybe Henning Christiansen's genius 'OP.176 PENTHESILEA' - so trust us you're in for a treat.
Boomkat Product Review:
First ever complete edition of Bernard Parmegiani & François Bayle’s electroacoustic epic inspired by Dante's 'Divine Comedy', the duo consolidating their talents and reimagining the enduring Medieval poem as an intensely visual tapestry of garbled words, tape-mangled squelches and crystalline drones.
Based on a narration of Dante's text from French singer Michel Hermon, 'Divine Comédie', like the source material itself, is split into three segments, with Parmegiani tackling 'Inferno', Bayle handling 'Purgatory' and both composers teaming up to figure out 'Paradise'. Parmegiani was quick to decide on his choice, and wrote his hour-long descent into hell between 1971 and '72, representing the realm's pain, punishment and contradiction with searing, drill-like synth whirrs, squealing feedback, warbling oscillations, doomy choral chants and ASMR-rich insectoid scratches. He keeps Hermon's voice relatively clean throughout, letting it anchor the soundscape but muddying the narrative by chopping extracts from the session and placing them "haphazardly in the music". It works chillingly well: Parmegiani wants to uncover hell's labyrinthine logic, and lays out an architecture that's both sonically terrifying and energetically absurd. The acrobatic processes he demonstrated on albums like 'La Création Du Monde' and 'De Natura Sonorum' are given additional shadows here, cast into darkness with spine-tingling reverb and doom-y early renaissance aesthetic callbacks. It's a surreal, mind-altering radio play, of a sort, cut into by Parmegiani's serrated noise and disorientating ambience.
Bayle's reply, written in 1972, is very different. The French acousmatic music pioneer plays more freely with Hermon's voice, using it to balance his cold, minimalist synthwork and concrète orchestral distortions. To Bayle, purgatory is bleak and almost serene, with glimmers of hope seeping in from the far corners. Hermon's words are left to ring out clearly, before being turned into unintelligible whispers, echoes and whispers that dart around Bayle's fragmented assemblage of futuristic suspended drones and ferric instrumentation. Hauntingly archaic string plucks and horn blasts crumple the timeline, and Bayle creates drama with chaotic outbursts of noise, returning to Harmon's voice as a salve that drops us back into the narrative for a few moments. And on the 22-minute collaboration 'Paradis', Parmegiani and Bayle steer us slowly towards luminescence. Harmon's narration is absent from this one, and the two composers overlay their ascetic electronics, working relatively minimally at first, criss-crossing high-pitched, quivering whines that suggest a relief from the punishing fires of hell and the chilly transparency of purgatory. In time, the duo melt in celestial vibraphone chimes and jagged accordion sounds that throb into a light-headed climax backed by the faintest traces of choirs in the distance.
There's little else quite like it - maybe Henning Christiansen's genius 'OP.176 PENTHESILEA' - so trust us you're in for a treat.
Deluxe 4xLPs housed in an embossed gatefold cover designed by Stephen O’Malley. Comes with a 23.60 x 35.50 inches (30 x 90 cm) poster.
Out of Stock
Boomkat Product Review:
First ever complete edition of Bernard Parmegiani & François Bayle’s electroacoustic epic inspired by Dante's 'Divine Comedy', the duo consolidating their talents and reimagining the enduring Medieval poem as an intensely visual tapestry of garbled words, tape-mangled squelches and crystalline drones.
Based on a narration of Dante's text from French singer Michel Hermon, 'Divine Comédie', like the source material itself, is split into three segments, with Parmegiani tackling 'Inferno', Bayle handling 'Purgatory' and both composers teaming up to figure out 'Paradise'. Parmegiani was quick to decide on his choice, and wrote his hour-long descent into hell between 1971 and '72, representing the realm's pain, punishment and contradiction with searing, drill-like synth whirrs, squealing feedback, warbling oscillations, doomy choral chants and ASMR-rich insectoid scratches. He keeps Hermon's voice relatively clean throughout, letting it anchor the soundscape but muddying the narrative by chopping extracts from the session and placing them "haphazardly in the music". It works chillingly well: Parmegiani wants to uncover hell's labyrinthine logic, and lays out an architecture that's both sonically terrifying and energetically absurd. The acrobatic processes he demonstrated on albums like 'La Création Du Monde' and 'De Natura Sonorum' are given additional shadows here, cast into darkness with spine-tingling reverb and doom-y early renaissance aesthetic callbacks. It's a surreal, mind-altering radio play, of a sort, cut into by Parmegiani's serrated noise and disorientating ambience.
Bayle's reply, written in 1972, is very different. The French acousmatic music pioneer plays more freely with Hermon's voice, using it to balance his cold, minimalist synthwork and concrète orchestral distortions. To Bayle, purgatory is bleak and almost serene, with glimmers of hope seeping in from the far corners. Hermon's words are left to ring out clearly, before being turned into unintelligible whispers, echoes and whispers that dart around Bayle's fragmented assemblage of futuristic suspended drones and ferric instrumentation. Hauntingly archaic string plucks and horn blasts crumple the timeline, and Bayle creates drama with chaotic outbursts of noise, returning to Harmon's voice as a salve that drops us back into the narrative for a few moments. And on the 22-minute collaboration 'Paradis', Parmegiani and Bayle steer us slowly towards luminescence. Harmon's narration is absent from this one, and the two composers overlay their ascetic electronics, working relatively minimally at first, criss-crossing high-pitched, quivering whines that suggest a relief from the punishing fires of hell and the chilly transparency of purgatory. In time, the duo melt in celestial vibraphone chimes and jagged accordion sounds that throb into a light-headed climax backed by the faintest traces of choirs in the distance.
There's little else quite like it - maybe Henning Christiansen's genius 'OP.176 PENTHESILEA' - so trust us you're in for a treat.
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