Eliane Radigue
Transamorem - Transmortem

THE REVIEW

"And time is no longer an obstacle, but the means by which the possible is achieved" (Eliane Radigue)

"Transamorem-Transmortem" (1973, but only published in 2011) is a 67-minute composition based on a minimal drone, a continuous flow of inexplicable and enigmatic beauty, where the variations (yes, there are some) occur in such cathartic, slow, and meditative tones that they envelop the listener without allowing them to identify too confidently what they are experiencing. Behind this album of twilight elegance lies the fascinating Eliane Radigue, mother of drone, who became famous (though always in a niche) with the famous "Trilogie De La Mort" and has been only recently rediscovered thanks to the usual word of mouth that arrives years later. A splendid and ethereal girl with "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" on her nightstand, she became capable of revolutionizing the concept of sound and finding her own dimension; one who, even at the age of eighty, is there handling synths and technological equipment, in the continuous search for a sound capable of condensing, in the limited space of an album, meditation, transcendence, and out-of-body experiences.

To say what really lies behind "Transamorem-Transmortem" is a challenge. Static and fluid like a motionless body of water, like a ghostly presence of unsettling otherness, it’s an album that sounds like a fainting, a slow and inexhaustible ordeal leading to a disorienting hypnosis, to sensations that allow us to move away from ourselves and face an unknown space (a confined space, however, like a long, dark, endless corridor) outside of time. 

I don’t know what more to tell you other than this is probably THE masterpiece of the genre (never, and I say never, a dull moment) that has ever come into my hands and that listened to in the dark, with closed eyes, in the full forgetting of one's living being, makes its presence felt. And it may keep us awake, astonished, immersed in a Down There where nothing or everything is possible.