[CP 203 CD] Ivan Pequeño; ¡Ahora! +

At the top of my personal holy grail list for a number of years has been this unobtainable side of Agitprop Musique Concrète by the Composer & Engineer Ivan Pequeño, composed from 1973-1975 at Paris' Studio de Musique Expérimentale du Centre Americain & at Belgrade's Studio de Musique Electronique du Treci Program-Radio & issued on Aldo Pagani's mythic Eleven label (for which Pequeño was something of a Bruno Menny -like figure, recording many of the label's releases) home of Franco Leprino's "Integrati… Disintegrati", amongst other gems.

The A-Side's "¡Ahora!" ("Now!") weaves the Composer's interstitial, claustrophobic narration of Wilhelm Reich & Pablo Neruda texts (done with a certain "mic down the throat" immediacy) into a series of transfixing synthesis patterns - not too removed from the sheets of sound being conjured simultaneously by François Bayle & Bernard Parmegiani on the other side of town - into quite an aggressive mix of full-blown Electronic Histrionics incorporating heavily treated recordings of Fidel Castro's 1962 "Second Declaration of Havana" speech.

"Y Removiero Con Sus Alas El Tiempo Estancado" - translated by Pequeño himself via email as "Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows... and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside" - wraps García-Márquez' "The Autumn of the Patriarch", read by Sara Bourasseau & Francisco Zumarque, around a stellar array of diffuse, precision electronics, recalling Dieter Kaufmann's "Herbstpathetique" & Luis De Pablo's "We (Nosotros)." 

This is an absolutely incredible document of Political Electronic Music, on par with Max Keller's "SMI," Ilhan Mimaroglu's "Sing Me a Song of Songmy" and the like; one of the real highlights in the late Creel Pone campaign, close to three years in the works. Included for reference is Pequeño's only other appearance on record; a short synthesizer & sax duet with Oliver Lake, as issued on the latter's 1975 Private Press LP "Passin' Thru".