Igor Wakhevitch

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I say its about time to add my hero. Composer Igor Wakhévitch. He's Kraut, Space/Psychedelia, Eclectic, Progressive Electronic and maybe most of all Avantprog. As cool and genious as Christian Vander! I'd be honored to write some kind of bio, although I'm not worthy. I consider the three first and his last album masterpieces of a unique kind of 70's progressive (the two titles stuck inbetween are four-stars. While my impression of the opera poem Etre Dieu is that its a unlistenable mess). 

This introduction and the reviews are written by 
Alan Freeman, and taken from John Coultheart.com  
'An unclassifiable talent, Igor Wakhévitch could be seen as the
French equivalent of someone like Ralph Lundsten, or an explorer like
Franco Battiato, a pioneer who proliferated in the Seventies with a
series of highly original and unusual albums.
Igor Wakhévitch’s roots are obscure, though his name implies he is
obviously of Russian ancestry, and apparently his father was a
celebrated theatre set-designer. It was obviously in the setting of the
theatre that Igor Wakhévitch saw new potentials in music. He was
something of a genius as a young musician. By the age of 17 he had
already won the first prize for piano at the Superior Conservatoire in
Paris. But, not content to stay in the classical world, he moved on.
His academic qualifications served him well. In 1968 he was working at
the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (then directed by Pierre Schaeffer)
with access to some of the most advanced studio equipment around. There
he learnt his craft as a sound designer, as a master of studio trickery
and musique-concrète techniques. The perfect foil for his own
musical talents, and as a way to play with the possibilities of sound
and other musical forms. This fertile environment, at studios that were
regularly visited and/or used by the likes of Pierre Henry, François
Bayle, Bernard Parmegiani, et al, was the ideal springboard for the
creation of a new form of music.
Pierre Henry had already become celebrated for his works combining
rock and electronics in the early part of the Sixties, and particularly
his music for the avant-garde ballets of Maurice Béjart. Igor
Wakhévitch saw this as his oeuvre, being fascinated by the new forms of
psychedelic rock that were making shock-waves in France. With the
moniker “Ballet for the 21st Century” he worked with Béjart in an
attempt to turn this underground pop culture into high art. Inspiration
came from Soft Machine and Pink Floyd, and in fact Igor Wakhévitch
worked quite extensively with Robert Wyatt and Soft Machine for a while.
At this time, Igor Wakhévitch also worked together with Terry Riley
learning special tricks about tape delays and looping techniques. All
this experience melted into the pot of what became a unique music, with
a focus that lay in processing instruments, usually in a melodic
framework, blending in rock and diverse classical forms, bringing
different unlikely musics together, often in most perplexingly odd
ways. Igor Wakhévitch thus became established at Pathé Marconi Studios
and also did production work for other studios and labels, and as a
result got in touch with the French up-and-coming home-grown rock
scene. The seeds were set for a radical and unique new form of music'

- Logos

 With such a background, and a concept based on Greek legend, Logos
"Rituel Sonore" amounted to a revolutionary creation for a 1970
release. Even if you know works like Pierre Henry’s The Green Queen,
which was weirdly comprised of rock and avant-garde musics fused together,
you’ll still be in for a surprise. Here we have a soprano singer,
strange orchestral textures and percussives (drums, cymbals, gongs, etc.)
blended with effects and processing. As the ominous percussion sets off
with drum-rolls and ritualistic tension, the mood is of a looming anticipation
of what is to come. here we go through phases of weird swirling effects,
vivid reverb and atmosphere. The tension becomes overpowering, yet we
are led on. Here we have the key to Igir Wakhévitch’s sound,
in a tension that becomes awe-inspiring.

The climax of the whole opus comes with "Danse Sacrale" , an
extraordinary psychedelic instrumental performed by Triangle (one of the
earliest French psychedelic bands) that has to be heard to be believed.
A great band in their early days, this goes to prove that Triangle were
not just Pink Floyd cum Traffic copyists. This all amounts to a unique
fusing of psychedelia and the avant-garde, and an awesome experience !

- Docteur Faust

 This is the most obscure album of the lot. I’d never hit it
before this release. Aptly in tune with the title, it is also one of the
strangest. Docteur Faust was created for a festival in Avignon, and was
later choreographed. Though, the mind boggles as to how anyone could dance
to this. "Full of fury and energy" to quote a reviewer at the
Avignon festival, it certainly is !

On one hands this is a more balanced blending of classical and dramatic
musics, yet also it is much more extreme. There’s a wealth of sonic
collage, dense musique-concrete, and bizarre musics that collide and fragment
against rock structures. There’s also moments of pure classical avant-garde
moving into ensemble pieces feeling like Henze meets Ligeti or Xenakis.
The use of electronics is really vivid too. There are no rules or boundaries
in what makes up a Wakhévitch composition ! The rock elements return
throughout this album and, although not credited, I would guess that again
Triangle members are featured. The guitar reminds of Alain Renaud, and
percussion is quite distinctive, backed-up with weirdly treated organ.
Although a short album, it is so engrossing and weird that it would be
too-much if it were much longer.

- Hathor

 Dating from 1973, shortly after working with Terry Riley on his Happy
Ending soundtrack,

there’s an obvious big advance in Hathor "Lithurgie du Souffle
Pour la Résurrection des Morts", with greater use of keyboards,
synthesizers, and looping techniques. But Hathor is no mere synth album,
far from it, but is Igor Wakhévitch’s most powerful opus.
Making use of the Paris Opera choir (no-less), along with weirdly processed
vocals, his usual off-the-wall electronics, and even drum/sequencer drives
unprecedented in any form of music before this. It’s another sonic
roller-coaster ride, in which we experience an ominous bellowing God-like
voice heralding something visionary.

As with his previous albums, Hathor contains a number of separate tracks
that continue or segue from each other, amounting to what feels like one
work. Here, we have surging electronic and percussion drives, a climax
sparked off by lightning, thunder-crashes, a wealth of weird contorted
voices, and much much more. Here tension gives way to intense power resulting
in a kind of dark Vangelis - on the edge ! With a weird Gothic choral
number and another electronic rock opus to follow Hathor really flies
! Only the closing coda offers relief, with a reflection on obvious Terry
Riley influences, and hinting at the albums to come.

- Les Fous d’Or

 This is quite simply, the weirdest of the batch ! Scored for ballets
by the much celebrated avant-garde choreographer Carolyn Carlson. A big
step away from rock, this &çè( album is the challenching
start to the second phase of Igor Wakhévitch’s career. A very
avant-garde opera in parts, starting with a warbling soprano and cello,
you’d never guess where this album is going to take you. Synthesizers
(in looping patterns) take us close to the feel of Ralph Lundsten at this
time, which is not so surprising as Ralph Lundsten had also worked with
Carolyn Carlson. Tape collage is also used extensively, along with ritualistic
horns (sounds like Jac Berrocal), waves of sonic slurry, and a total disregard
for conventional musical continuity. Admittedly, it took a long while
to really get into this one !

- Nagual

 Although a concept in its own right, Nagual "Les Ailes de la
Perception" (from 1977) again features music for a Carolyn Carlson
ballet. Arguably, it’s the closest to Ralph Lundsten, as a largely
cosmic work, with looping synthesizer patterns, putting melody against
dissonance, moving on from the darker edge of the "new-age".
The format is different to all the previous albums, in that this has 12
tracks (ranging from 30 seconds to 8 minutes) and features musics unheard
of within the Wakhévitch oeuvre before, like piano works of a weirdly
construed type (reminding of Ron Geesin) and what feels like a bizarre
Celtic jig amongst them. The mood is generally mysterious and enigmatic,
largely based around cycling patterns of keyboards and other instruments.
The range is very diverse and surprising. But, having said that, typically
Wakhévitch it is - as an uneasy balance that’s engrossing
- still so enigmatic and fresh !

- Let's Start

 This final album, from 1979, was created for the Batsheva Dance Company
(for the festival of Jerusalem), and musically is the sum of many ideas
from the two albums before, but in a more atmospheric framework. The grand
opus here, the 21 minute "Let’s Start" itself, is a treat
for those into the pioneering works of Terry Riley and Steve Reich in
that this combines use of delay lines on keyboards a-la Riley with phasing
techniques on voices first explored by Reich. Not really systems music
though, as the development of the work is not predictable, even the ending
is a surprise where confused phrases organise themselves into a logical
sentence ! Extremely clever, indeed ! The remaining works are Igor Wakhévitch
at his most restrained and subdued, largely synth/keyboard based, and
feel more like a hybrid of Deuter and peter Michael Hamel, with a very
film soundtrack type of feel.
As far as I gather Igor Wakhévitch sees Let’s
Start as a return full circle to his roots, though such a progression
or connection is hardly logical. There are characteristics and stylisms
that one picks up on in Igor Wakhévitch music, but they are very
hard to pin-down. Though I had heard rumour of other works, this seems
to be his entire published oeuvre. It all amounts to a bizarre and fascinating
trip with one of the true revolutionaries in new-music, and a definitive
set collecting it all together. The set is presented in a small red box,
including a poster (with the album sleeves) and a 24 page booklet (in
French, with a number of pictures), along with the 6 individually sleeved
CD’s. The original Igor Wakhévitch LP releases, despite being
on major labels like EMI and Atlantic, are nowadays all pretty rare and
collectable (most are reputedly worth £30+, with Docteur Faust reckoned
to be worth £100). Alan Freeman
See also:
http://www.fractal-records.com/02review/f002.htm

http://gnosis2000.net/reviews/wakhevitch.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Wakh%C3%A9vitch

http://www.progresiva70s.com/francia_nz.htm#Igor%20Wakhevitch

http://www.babyblaue-seiten.de/index.php?bandId=2673&content=band&left=year&year=1979

http://www.listology.com/content_show.cfm/content_id.22792/Music

A link to his triple album opera poem: Etre Dieu 