Dimitri Voudouris, Electro-Acoustic Music

Greek-born Dimitri Voudouris (b 1961) writes electro-acoustic music in the grand manner. Like Xenakis and Stockhausen before him, he favors long audio-audible poems that utilize complex sounds in an almost symphonic manner, except this is high avant garde in result. And he does not remind of either composer in any concrete way. He does sound very much individual, original.

His four-work release on Pogus (21056-2) brings some important music to our attention. Complex pitch-noise constructions come together and undergo extensive development and transformation in the long-formed pieces we hear. According to the liner notes, he "bases his technical and theoretical compositional approach on research of cognitive psycho-acoustic behavioural patterns in humans, and the behaviour of sounds in relation to continued environmental changes." Hearing in this case is believing.

The music is more in the realm of flowing sustained soundscapes than it is a matter of serialist hot-potato passing. And for such flow the music is invitingly narrative-like. Each work seems a story in sound with no literal meaning but quite meaningful in an abstracted way.

Voudouris to my mind is a major voice in the electronic music of the present. For all that this release gives you an excellent sampling of what he is about. All Gyro Gearloose folks like me will find it most pleasingly enveloping. Definitely recommended.