September 2024; long-awaited & much needed refresh of this canonic early C.P. classic, here augmenting the original "Magyar Elektronikus Zene: Hungarian Electronic Music" (SLPX 11851, 1979) set w/ the entirely apropos follow-up, "Fiatal Magyar Zeneszerzők Elektronikus Kompozíciói = Electronic Music By Young Hungarian Composers" (SLPX 12371, 1983) on a second disc, along with the... additional addition of the stunning Electronic Gliss-Drone piece "A Hundred Years' Average = Százéves Átlag" from Zoltan Jeney's intial Hungaroton survey (SLPX 12059, 1979; released simultaneously with the original "Magyar" LP) added at the end of disc one! Comes with a 6-panel insert (in addition to the 6-panel semi-gloss booklet) recreating the multi-lingual inserts included in the original editions!

It’s Friday, and here’s another Creel Pone - I’m sensing a pattern here - this time a thoroughly fantastic comp running down the cream of the early-mid 70s Budapest crop. One of my all-time favorite pieces of Electronic Music is on here; Zoltan Pongracz’s "Egy Cisz-Dúr Akkord Története" (or, "The Story of a Chord in C Sharp Major") which sounds like a Hammond Organ melting over a rainbow arc.

Other than the last piece (mired by a somewhat crippling sound-set consisting of what are now known as “Sci-Fi noises”) everything here is of the highest caliber; an especially attractive proposition as most of the composers are entirely unknown outside of Hungary other than Pongracz (who split a Deutsche Grammophon “Avant-Garde” series LP with Gottfried-Michael König) and possibly Eötvös; but you’d have to be very knowledgeable.

Totally great found-junkbox cover collage repro’ed here beautifully, as are the liner notes (in four languages) on the gatefold of the booklet inside. The first of, hopefully, many Geographically-specific titles in this fledgling, mysterious series.