A collection of the earliest recordings of the French sound sculpture musicians and Cristalists known as Structures Sonores Lasry-Baschet. Featuring the first fruits of one of the greatest unisons in experimental French music combining the beguiling haunting sounds of Jacques and Yvonne Lasry and the development of the musical inventions of Bemard and Francois Baschet. Exploring a similar route to that of early Michel Magne recordings (and often likened to “a French Harry Partch”) the emotive music made with these organic, municipal, revolutionary instruments between 1957 and 1962 rode a narrow path between post-Second World War experimental music and anti-electronica before providing the world with the sound of the Granada Television Picture Box theme and one of Magma’s deepest foundations.

The instruments known as Structures Sonores were designed and made in the late 1940s by Paris born engineer and sculptor siblings Bemard and Francois Baschet with the original aim to create portable, collapsible and municipal instruments based on inflatable components.

Eventually incorporating metal bars, steel rods, air-filled plastic spheres (balloons), crystal stems and steel bars the instruments were totally independent of electrical or electronic components or equipment sidestepping the celebrated trends in tape manipulation and musique concrete, standing at the journalistic forefront of French experimental music in the 1950s. Played using horsehair bows and wet glass rods which resonated the tubes and metal surfaces the amplification was produced by the movement of vibrating rods embedded in fixed plates and the timbre could be modified by altering the sizes of the resonators. By the early fifties the brothers had invented a series of large visually striking sculpture-like instruments that could be used by participants of any age regardless of any formal musical training mainly combining crystal, water and steel to crea.......
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A collection of the earliest recordings of the French sound sculpture musicians and Cristalists known as Structures Sonores Lasry-Baschet. Featuring the first fruits of one of the greatest unisons in experimental French music combining the beguiling haunting sounds of Jacques and Yvonne Lasry and the development of the musical inventions of Bemard and Francois Baschet. Exploring a similar route to that of early Michel Magne recordings (and often likened to “a French Harry Partch”) the emotive music made with these organic, municipal, revolutionary instruments between 1957 and 1962 rode a narrow path between post-Second World War experimental music and anti-electronica before providing the world with the sound of the Granada Television Picture Box theme and one of Magma’s deepest foundations.

The instruments known as Structures Sonores were designed and made in the late 1940s by Paris born engineer and sculptor siblings Bemard and Francois Baschet with the original aim to create portable, collapsible and municipal instruments based on inflatable components.

Eventually incorporating metal bars, steel rods, air-filled plastic spheres (balloons), crystal stems and steel bars the instruments were totally independent of electrical or electronic components or equipment sidestepping the celebrated trends in tape manipulation and musique concrete, standing at the journalistic forefront of French experimental music in the 1950s. Played using horsehair bows and wet glass rods which resonated the tubes and metal surfaces the amplification was produced by the movement of vibrating rods embedded in fixed plates and the timbre could be modified by altering the sizes of the resonators. By the early fifties the brothers had invented a series of large visually striking sculpture-like instruments that could be used by participants of any age regardless of any formal musical training mainly combining crystal, water and steel to crea.......
more