Etant Donnés - Mort Aux Vaches : Le Sang Est Le Mur De L'Étoile

"Mort Aux Vaches : Le Sang Est Le Mur De L'Étoile" was released by Staalplaat in 1998.

Get it here : Etant Donnés - Mort Aux Vaches : Le Sang Est Le Mur De L'Étoile

Vita Nova International [C50 Tape]

This compilation was released by Etant Donnés' own imprint, Vita Nova from Grenoble, France.

Side A :
1. Savage Republic - Assembly Of The Dead
2. Étant Donnés - Le Sens Positif
3. Nurse With Wound - Cottonwood Hill
4. Bruno Cossano - Le Grand Supplice

Side B :
1. Deviation Social - We Declare War
2. Die Tödliche Doris - 1 Kästchen - 1 Schnürchen
3. Victor Nubla - Tequila Mariachi
4. Victor Nubla - Confidencia
5. Victor Nubla - Tormenta
6. Victor Nubla - Musica Para Un Bar (2)
7. Angst - De Wereld Zinkt In De Afval
8. Angst - De Nieuwe Pastoor

"Vita Nova International" was released by Vita Nova in 1984.

Get it here : Vita Nova International

Etant Donnés - Plutôt L'Exil Du Cinq Doré - 7"

This 7" single was released on Etant Donnés' own imprint, Vita Nova from Grenoble, France.

Side A :
1. Plutôt L'Exil Du Cinq Doré

Side B :
1. Monde Et Chair
2. Les Fours à Chaux

"Plutôt L'Exil Du Cinq Doré" was released by Vita Nova in 1983.

Get it here : Etant Donnés - Plutôt L'Exil Du Cinq Doré

Etant Donnés - L'Eclipse [C50 Tape]

From the liner notes : "Staalplaat and Ambassade organize performances of groups in The Netherlands. Staaltape made recordings of these performances and released them a a special edition, the Documentation series."

Etant Donnés' "L'Eclipse" was the first ever contribution to the Documentation series.

Side A :
1. Le Sens Positif (Genève: 24-2-'84)
2. Français Encore Un Effort (Roma: 12-2-'82)
3. Sombre Eclair 2 (Roma: 12-2-'82)
4. Le Sens Positif (Genève: 24-2-'84)

Side B :
1. L'Eclipse
2. Le Paradis Blanc (Lyon: 26-4-'83)
3. La Mer Et Ses Marins
4. Le Paradis Jaune

"L'Eclipse" was released by Staalplaat in 1985.

Get it here : Etant Donnés - L'Eclipse

Etant Donnés - L'Autre Rive / Le Sens Positif [2 x CD]

"ETANT DONNÉS is a duet by Eric and Marc Hurtado created in Grenoble in 1980. From this French town, it rapidly became international, especially in Europe.
Born in 1959 and 1962 respectively, in Rabat, Morocco, the two brothers have chosen both orality and writing, with a clear, semantic word, yet without the burden of grammar.
Through them, it is the volume of each word that becomes an object-sculpture, together with the power of their bodies expressing their voices.
Each event is the scream - indeed even the glissando -
of the strength of the word that sometimes abruptly becomes a rock, a solid surface, not in the least fluvial, as is the narrative of a tale, novel or poetic epic.
With both of them, no more trace of ancient prosodies,
no more trace the incomprehensible Sainte-Beuve who could claim: "I have to collect a volume of prose".
The word, the voice, the volume take shape with each other, unveiling a theatre that theatre usually ignores, which has given it such things as a Samuel Beckett's Fin de Partie.
Moreover listening to Aurore, our two actors' CD, undoubtedly owing to the influence of the Mediterranean cradle, single umbilical cord of two great religions, the influence of both Latin and Arab worlds - Gaelic short and long sounds can sometimes be perceived - since their dictions are such a synthesis of several origins.
Nothing is left here of the schools of a Charles Dullin, so dear to the Comédie Française. On the contrary, ETANT DONNÉS is a corporal and semantic circus, yet without semantics.

With their oral and combinative strengths, Eric and Marc give us the action of theatre, from which dictions and descriptive declamations disappear. I could write to them in early December 1994: "[...] in the power of voices and semantics, as well as in the severe body/mind combination, inseparable from each other, I find in Aurore a song of the bodies, indispensable to any sound values. "
In addition to their violences, their sensuous delicacies often in these word cutouts, their nakedness and lights -indeed even made up - come accounts of naked men who need neither conventional costumes nor the devices of traditional stages any more.
What I felt on listening to Aurore was confirmed by Patrick Bossati in May 1992, in this excerpt:
"Be it poetry, cinema, sound, stage, everything the two of them do is done with a kind of rage that leaves you stunned. Their sound, for example, extensive, grave and apocalyptic, mixed from amplified natural elements, make those who listen dumbfounded. Their art is staggering in every respect, in the 16th century sense of the French word 'sidérant', when it meant: 'influenced by the stars'. Their music is a radioscopy of the chaos of the universe and of matter."

This duet, I insist, took form in 1980. It is part of the ineluctable (re)birth of oralities - exorcists - both re-discovered and discovered in the electronic worlds. Together with the passion of travels, where Etant Donnés is "staggering in every respect".
Any true sound poetry is shattering, the really oral one is there in space, with the plus of the media machines, of the voices that slip through them, overwhelming them with the splendour of the bodies." (Henri Chopin)



"L'Autre Rive / Le Sens Positif" was released by Staalplaat in 1992.

Get it here : Etant Donnés - L'Autre Rive / Le Sens Positif

Sky Flowers & Horse Eggs

From Discogs.com : "An unusual title for an unusual album. I haven't heard anything quite this strange since La Légende Des Voix released the much acclaimed (and rightly so) "Mouvements" compilation (unless you count Anckarstrom's CD collection). It is a challenging collection of audio montages, atmospheres and complementary music. The cover is bright and colourful with Asian mythological images, an almost Blake-like painting and various other strange images. Below is a brief description of each piece.

SPINAL MACHINE's "Inside" - an indistinct mass of churning sound - not unlike the Extreme Noise favoured in Japan, but an amorphous shifting of barely-perceived audio images - some short and percussive - others longer, more sustained. This is the language of gas, a whisper of ancient, terrible beings rising from unfathomable chasms beneath the Earth's mantle, out of lungs part fossilised, corrupted by water.

BLACKHOUSE give us "Halo Trance (Eternal Spirit Mix)" - a much muted piece as of busy railway yards heard from deep underground, where lighter tones reverberate through dirty tiled tunnels, arriving at different times to the bass. This continues for some time while the lost spirits of synth buskers echo strange noises which blend with the other more real sounds. A strange, dark, chilling atmosphere which offers little threat.

ETANT DONNES offer "S'Envole" which is more an intense ambient piece - an active waterfall, chopping of sticks and stones thrown into water while a voice whispers in your ear. A rumble builds up, as of a machine set to engulf the listener. Towards the end the stones are dug out with more gusto and strange, alien bird-like voices cry out in fear or warning as others gather overhead. This dies back, then grows again on a deeper rumble, as if the same scenario were heard from a greater distance while booted feet run through gravel and the voice whispers more frantically.

NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS offer two pieces - "Adam Hickson/The War on Drugs". The first piece is taken from an answering machine - a young lad warning someone off. After this a high sequential rhythm, bright and repetitive cycles while a gang of girls discuss Adam Hickson. This decays away and in it's place rises a strangely angular piece - sequential but played on harmonica or accordion while synthetic sounds and distorted voices circle, gathering in bubbling pools of noise.

RANDY GREIF's track is "The Numbers Cage", a more passive, minimal thing which seems to consist mainly of looped tapes, with sound sources possibly being piano, organ, panpipes. This passive sound is destroyed by more abrasive sounds - harsh, almost metal bashes, scampering junk sculptures - scrap heap tin men in spastic marathon run, while a crowd of mad tape machines play minimal sounds in a textural cacophony. The race turns into a battle, with each participant using whatever weapon comes to hand.

PFN offer "Sarajevo", a more passive, calming mood piece which soothes the nerves. Keyboards swell up in almost static bodies - perhaps a Hollywood sound representation of sunrise, with a sense of events due to happen, just over the next horizon. It opens out into a sad instrumental, with saxophone making dour comment, hinting at a people whose encapsulated traditions are being ploughed asunder by pointless conflict.

JOHN WATERMANN's "The Golden Anger of Tearing" tells a tale in sound - a vignette of struggle in an inhuman environs. Imagine a jungle, full of life - birds, insects and small mammals all living out their noisy lives. Imagine a man, labouring over his broken-down vehicle, trying to get it's reluctant engine to run - his life under threat if he cannot drive out of such a place. This sounds quite literally what is happening here (although the engine sounds more like a generator). We leave him still struggling, unaware of any outcome.

S.F.O. give us "Raan" - fading in on deep amorphous sound with voices floating like muscae volitantes through the heavy soup. Something akin to a rhythm thumps it's other-worldly, machine-like way out of the speakers, a dark, edgeless dull booming sound with other, lighter pieces adding to it's almost structured shell.

ZOVIET FRANCE contribute "I Felt the Breath of My Assassin", built again on a deep machine-like foundation, various sounds fade in and out - some from the stranger realms of synthesis, others seemingly 'found' - perhaps samples, perhaps not. The overall feel is of a static mood, of events impending. Fragments of Ethnic instruments appear here and there. A more deliberate structure shows through, albeit muted and held way back, bound by coils of passive tension. It concludes on an almost vocal swell of digeridoo-like sound and passive machine synth.

G*PARK give us "Yack" which follows in a similar mood, opening with wooden percussion, then settling for non-structured deep metallic clanks and dark waves of sound which build up, disappear, return in an altered form, then restructure again in a well composed series of deep thunders, percussive booms, clanking, reverberated sound all making a strange, temple ceremony-like sound heard through the ears of, say, an uncomprehending bat !

SHABDA close the album with "Paramahamsa", a piece building on bubbling water with distant echoed voices heard below the bubbling sounds. The initial watery sound dies away and a series of sustained voices, in a dis-harmonic swell, rises up through the sound, to be once more usurped by the water. After this the voices rise, bringing with them an Oriental sound - not unlike looped koto or sarod. After this rises a piece set against ambient bird sound while voices chanting "Hare Krishna" and bright keyboards appear, in a piece with all the elements of New Age, yet anything but the mood.

All in all an intriguing album and recommended to those with a sense of adventure."

Tracklisting :
01. Spinal Machine - Inside
02. Blackhouse - Halo Trance (Eternal Spirit Mix)
03. Etant Donnés - S'envole
04. Nocturnal Emissions - Adam Hickson / The War On Drugs
05. Randy Greif - The Numbers Cage
06. PFN - Sarajevo
07. John Watermann - The Golden Anger Of Tearing
08. S.F.O. - Raan
09. Zoviet-France - I Felt The Breath Of My Assassin
10. G*Park - Yack
11. Shabda - Paramahamsa

"Sky Flowers & Horse Eggs" was released by Hypnagogia in 1992.

Get it here : Sky Flowers & Horse Eggs