Subtitled "Electro-Acoustic Music From Argentina," this 1998 CD gathers seven pieces by five young South American composers (each composer gets around 12 minutes, and two, Richardo Dal Farra and Martin Alejandro Fumarola, choose to place two shorter pieces instead of one long one), all of whom employ tape manipulation and other electronic methods along with more traditional musical influences. Familiar sounds like voices and marimba (on
Teodoro Cromberg's "Marimbagenes") are skillfully reworked by the composers, and placed in unexpected new contexts. The twin highlights are Fumarola's "Callejuelas," which recalls
Terry Riley's experiments with phasing in its exploration of the sound of one synthesized note and the ways in which it can be manipulated, and Dal Farra's "Ashram," a long duet for tape and an Indian double-reed horn called a mukha veena that sounds like
Robert Fripp's tape delay and overdub "Frippertronics" ideas applied to a mid-'60s ESP-Disk free jazz experiment. Fans of
Jon Hassell's '80s work will find it particularly interesting. ~ Stewart Mason