Igor Wakhévitch - Hathor

All Saints' Day / Toussaint / Día de Muertos favourite! Wakhevitch's electronic mass for the Resurection of the Dead. Pure 1970's avant-garde craze, Hathor is a complexe liturgical fantasy, a night of Sabbath that ends at the crack of dawn - quite literally, as the LP ends with "Aurore", a mind-blowing early example of environmental/ambient music. Very clean OG copy.

The early 1970's sure were wild times in the French underground: labels like Saravah offered a pop sound that was freer, wilder than ever, influenced by the latest revolutions in jazz, while Olivier Messiaen's student Igor Wakhévitch would rather meddle with brand new Moog synths and incorporate their novel sound into provocative, heretic prog music rather than follow his venerable master on the path of avant-garde respectability. 

Hathor, is his most coherent piece of work - one of the most consistent piece of prog music ever, next to Mike Ratledge's Riddle Of The Sphinx and Popol Vuh's Hosianna Mantra - and far more Messiaen-esque than one may think. Relying mostly on male choirs, heavily influenced by ethnomusicological recordings of far-eastern sacred music, it hints at Messiaen's orchestral work in many ways, from the liturgical structure of the record to the use of birds recordings - and I'm sure a real musicologist (I'm not) could find many more analogies. This is music from a "dark Messiaen", in a way.

However, Wakhevitch's music also profoundly depart from Messiaen in its use of repetitive rhythm pattern, to an extent that make the "Grand sabbat luciférien", the acme of the record/mass, sounds like a Detroit techno track, by say, Carl Craig.

As I mentioned earlier, the trip ends in a calming way, with "Aurore", a piece where the first ray of lights are metaphorically depicted by a beaming synth. Early birds' sounds slowly fade away as an organ, in the distance, once again recalls Olivier Messiaen. (NM/VG+)

Tracklist

1. Hymne À Sathanael (Aimantation Des Forces)
2. Grand Sabbat Luciférien (Régime Des Arches)
3. Rituel De Guerre Des Esprits De La Terre
4. Cris Pour Les Sabbats Infernaux Et Invocations Des Daimons
5. Office De La Levée Du Corps (De Profundis)
6. Amenthi (Attente De La Seconde Mort)
7. Aurore