2021 reédition of this mid-late period C.P. classic, now including all three of the Electro-Acoustic titles issued by Diapasão as part of their "Discoteca Básica Nacional" series, adding Jorge Peixinho's "Elegia a Amílcar Cabral" (#6; two entirely different takes of a powerful piece composed the day of the P.A.I.G.C. founder's murder in Conakry, realized on the EMS Synthi 100 at IPEM utilizing only 12x Sine-Wave Generators & onboard reverb/filtering) & Candido Lima's "Sand Automata, Legends Of Neptune, Oceans" (#33; three incredible, noisy takes on static-leaning synthesis) to Filipe Pires' "Canto Ecuménico, Litania, Homo Sapiens" (#13) honoring the (loose) chronology of the composition dates (if not exactly the order of issue); enjoy!

Composed at the GRM - the two B-side pieces, both in 1972 - & at his own “Private” studio in Porto - the A-side, 1979 - this trilogy of Musique Concrète pieces by the Portugese composer Filipe Pires was initially issued in 1980 as part of Imavox’s “Discoteca Básica Nacional” series (#13), alongside Jorge Peixinho’s epic “Elegia a Amílcar Cabral” (#6) & Candido Lima's "Sand Automata, Legends Of Neptune, Oceans" (#33).

“Canto Ecuméncio” is a beautifully chaotic & extended ride, wherein we’re taken through a brutalist, man-on-the-street voyage through various folk-forms in an overdriven & ultra-present manner, positing itself as the spiritual heir to Logothetis’ “Fantasmata 1960” - with which it shares a strikingly similar energy and/or timbral / thematic bent - worth it for the price of admission alone; in many ways its the agitprop anti-"Presque Rien" / "Music Promenade". 

The two GRM pieces are slightly more nuanced, showing Pires as a fine studio technician as well as exhibiting an excellent conceptual sense - "Litania’s” sheet-metal grapplings are the stuff of legend, rivaling only Xenakis’ “Bohor” in its presaging of Industrial forms - but I’m personally the most enamored with the pause-pregnant eruption-eerings of “Homo Sapiens” - as fine an example of the possibilities of the tape-studio at the turn of the 70s as any, sharing Dockstader’s affinity for the between-the-stations telemetries of radio transmissions amidst clattering piano & percussion juxtapositions.