Up next on Lawrence English‘s Room40 label is Argentina-born, France-based composer Beatriz Ferreyra with her Echos + album.

Ferreyra has played a hushed but critical role in the development of musique concrète since its early days, working with the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) directed by Pierre Schaeffer, with whom she collaborated during the writing of his Solfège de l’Objet Sonore. Echos+, one of only a few collections of her work available on vinyl, collects three of Ferreyra’s most affecting pieces, each of which explores questions of mortality and the afterlife.

“I’m not really sure when I first heard Beatriz Ferreyra’s music. My best guess would be in the early to mid 2000s when I was working alongside the curatorial team at Liquid Architecture. Given the focus of the festival at that time, GRM and musique concrète more generally was very much a point of focus,” English recalls. “That said, it wasn’t until this decade that her work was sharply in focus for me (and I am guessing a great many others).”

English connected with Ferreyra at Semibreve Festival 2017 and that’s how the release came about. Her work is “simultaneously complex and elegantly simple,” he explains.

Often drawing upon a singular object of focus, Ferreyra’s use of tape and other forms of manipulation radically reconfigure her chosen sound materials, opening them outward. “Echos,” for example, is sourced entirely from recordings of her niece who was killed in a car accident, and “The Other Shore,” composed as a response to “The Tibetan Book Of The Dead,” uses only percussion.

“Each of the works is deeply personal, but transcends that position, effortlessly welcoming us inside them,” English adds. “They collectively chart out a broad framework that not only defines her philosophical interests as a composer, but also marks out critical moments in her creative and technical approaches; shifting from her roots in tape music to more digital approaches.”

Tracklisting

01. Echos
02. L’autre … Ou Le Chant Des Marecages
03. L’autre Rive

Echos + LP is out March 27, with “Echos” streaming over at Bandcamp.