Another intense avant garde outing from 1980's Romania, this time by Octavian Nemescu contemporary Dinu Petrescu. After having studied at the famed Internationale Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik in Darmstradt, Germany, under the tutelage of Stockhausen, Xenakis and Ligeti, the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne, and the Paris Conservatory with Olivier Messiaen, Petrescu co-founded the electronic laboratory at the Bucharest Conservatory. "Cosmophony" realizes these influences, via live choirs, tape music, synthesizer, percussive elements and electronic processing into a sound of modernity from behind the iron curtain.
An instant favorite on first listen... this record is one big exercise in subtly intertwining drone elements, be it they electronic, strings or vocals. Side a bridges new age and nu new age with aplomb. This material would benefit GREATLY from a remaster - an undertaking which would bring out side b's fascinating micro interplay that predated the software based lowercase /microsound styles by over a decade. GREAT modern music. A streaming/download archive of Romanian avant garde composers, including Nemescu, is available >here<.