Cargo Records

Vice Versa, Etc.

1970 was an important year in Eliane Radigue's musical life since it was the year just before she acquired her ARP 2500 synthesizer. Since 1967, she had been using the feedback as a material; feedback from two tape recorders reworked through intensive studio techniques: slowing down, alteration, superimposition, montage.

In 1970, the last year she dedicated to feedback, several milestone pieces saw the light of day: Omnht, a wonderful sound installation for three out-of-phase tape loops and wall-mounted loudspeakers; the theoretical setting of Labyrinthe Sonore.Vice-Versa, etc was conceived as a sound installation setting similar to S=a=b=a+b. A single magnetic tape can be played at any speed, a stereo tape of which allows three playings: left channel alone, right channel alone, left and right channels together.

These different channels can be overlapped/crossed over as much as possible, at any speed. What is striking about this work, which may arguably be one of Radigue's most important compositions, is the extraordinary quality of the tones obtained from such a rudimentary material. It is hard to believe that the composer was yet to begin working on her ARP, since the sonorities heard on Vice-Versa, etc… are surprisingly similar to those she would go on to produce with her synthesizer. Vice-Versa, etc… is a minimal work which possesses an infinity of possible variations, a secret object containing the seeds of the oeuvre to come, and a discreet turning point linking the composer's two important working phases, an extremely subtle cross-fade between her feedback loop period to her ARP period.

Originally, only ten signed and numbered copies of this little boxset containing a magnetic tape and a handwritten note were released - needless to say this is a work that has been nearly forgotten! We have decided to reissue this object as a double CD, with the tape played respectively forwards and backwards, at four different speeds, corresponding to the standards of the tape recorders of the time. This will allow dedicated listeners to experiment with simultaneous playback of the work's different versions, recreating the conditions of the original installation.