Oeuvre Désintégrale

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“alga marghen presents one of the most impressive sound poetry anthologies ever published, introducing you to the sound works of the Nouveau Realiste artist François Dufrene. His work, along with that of Gil J Wolman and Brion Gysin, was a strong influence for experimental poets like Henri Chopin, Bernard Heidsieck and Ake Hodell. Previously issued in 2007 as a 4LP box set, this first edition on CD also includes “Crirythme pour Tinguely” as bonus track.

François Dufrene could be considered the younger of the first generation sound poets. Already in the Lettrist group when he was only 16 years old, with his own style marked by an hyper-powerful voice. In 1953, at the age of 23, he became Ultra-Lettrist, starting his first crirhythms by overpassing the alphabet in the perspective of the physical improvised scream. With the crirhythms sound poetry enters for the first time in the factory of projective sounds. In the beginning Dufrene uses the tape recorder only to document his creations. These recordings show him that through the tape machine his poems could reached deeper and wider creative dynamics. Since the mid-1950s the tape-machine becomes for him a poetical and experimental tool and Dufrene fully develops its potentials with stereophonic recordings as well as with the superimposition of his crirhythms. The loudspeakers amplifies sounds while the microphone captures even the most detailed concrete sound produced by his voice. The physical tempest he produces is a real concrete electronic sound attack. Dufrene produced primitive, brutal poems opening the path of vocal sounds to contemporary composers: it’s known that Pierre Henry was deeply inspired by Dufrene. The anthology presented here includes 10 crirhythms from different periods dating from 1965 to 1976, plus “Crirythme pour Tinguely” (first issued on a 7” single included in Revue AXE No.2 in 1975 and not available on the alga marghen 4LP anthology from 2007).

Also included is “Osmose-art”, a long piece from 1969 divided in two suites where Dufrene superimposes his crirhythms to classical music. A similar technique was applied a few years earlier adding jazz music (specially drum and percussion pieces) to poems marked by strong Lettristic aesthetic. Two of those “Lecture-collage” dating from 1965 are presented here, as well as two “Comptinuum” from his early on-progress works started in 1958.

François Dufrene also developed unique performances, with live reading of his written text. The most famous is “Tombeau de Pierre Larousse”, published in 1958. This is a work half way between the written text and the sound poem whose unity is achieved through Dufrene performing it. It’s a masterpiece of synthesis of active poetry. “Eryximaque, suite choreographique au Tombeau de Pierre Larusse” is also included in this anthology.

Apart from the crirythmes that Henri Chopin issued on his Revue OU disc magazine (the complete OU anthology is available from alga marghen as a 4cd set) and a few short pieces issued on obscure sound poetry anthologies in the end of the 1960’s, François Dufrene work is practically unavailable. This 3 CD anthology, conceived by the Dufrene himself as a 3 cassette edition privately issued by Guy Schraenen in the mid-1970s (only a handful of copies made), includes only previously unpublished sound works that finally fully documents the creativity of such a radical artist.

Edition limited to 300 copies, including 3CD as well as a 24 page booklet including two essays by Dufrene, the biography, the complete discography as well as original photos of various performances from the 1960s and 1970s.”