[CP 296 CD] Alberto Soriano; Qualiton Recordings

March 2024; Extremely glad to finally sort out this long-ago nominated title covering the 3 LPs of work by Argentinian Composer Alberto Soriano issued on Iván René Cosentino's Fonema s.c.a. sub-label Qualiton label between 1968 & 1970, centered around the stellar Musique Concrète masterpiece "Cánticos Para El Caminante [Construcciones Sonoras]".

Born in 1915 in Santiago del Estero, Argentina, Soriano began his studies in Composition & Ethnomusicology after moving to Bahia, Brazil & eventually ended up in Montevideo, Uruguay where he remained for the majority of his life. Traveling around South America during the 50s & 60s he was undoubtedly taken in by the breadth & complexity of the soundscapes he encountered, leading him to compose the "Songs for the Wanderer" on location via early portable magnetic tape systems.

"Cánticos" consists of densely layered "Sound-on-Sound" collages of environmental documentation & disturbance, rife with jarring pause-button effects and artifacts, lending a certain "Augmented Reality" tone that would be explored alternately by composers such as Luc Ferrari. In many ways it resembles the splendor of the coming "Cinema Pour l'Oreille" wave (especially that Robin MacKenzie "A Sound Work To Accompany" LP, [CP 168 CD]) and rivals such canonic in-situ documents as Charles M. Bogert's Sounds of North American Frogs (there's a fair big of Frog Sound herein, often recorded in such close proximity as to completely overload the mic preamps, creating an incredibly overmodulated squawk interlaced with gorgeous aquatic environments). 

As an incentive, I'm offering this double-disc set at the single-disc price-point, as a way to massage you into checking out Soriano's contemporaneous & highly gorgeous chamber work, which helps complete the picture of the ideas at play during the collection & assembly of the "Canticos" material.