[CP 179 CD] Henry Sweitzer; Te Deum: An Electronic Realization

I have a soft spot for "Religious" Early Electronic Music outings - secular or not, the "Provocative Electronics" LP is one of my favorites in the C.P. series, as are Ralph Swickard's "Sermons Of Saint Francis" & "Hymn Of Creation," both present on the first "Creelpolation" - so this "Private" 1979 outing, the sole release by Composer Henry Sweitzer of beautifully hand-played advanced synthesizer motifs & home-studio Musique Concrète is a real find.

Starting with the side-length title piece, Sweitzer's bi-tonal interjections over an all-electronic drone bed fit into a liturgical continuum of French church-organ improvisation & related tonal languages - it's an extended exploration of theme & variation that maps devout sensibilities to the electronic home-studio in a fascinating way; not to far off from Ernest Hood's "Neighborhoods" or even Jean Hoyoux's "Planètes" - but it's the arrival of the B-side's "Open Windows" where things start to get really interesting, with the composer's Synthi AKS filigree coming across more as a pure-sound exploration that gets quite noisy & gain-stage-abusing in spots. Finally "Study on a Waring Blender" is a private-Concrète moment excelsior, with "Classic studio techniques involved in shaping source material from a Waring Blender" yielding a buzzing wash of tape-sound that's as charming as anything on Jim Fassett's "Symphony of the Birds."

The entire art-spec of the original 1979 private Nimbus LP is recreated here beautifully, down to the cover's beguiling "Shaft of Blue Light".