ALAIN PIERRE - O Sidarta - LP - Vinyl

Within the elusive confines of this film awaits an album that defies categorisation by a musician who in a different time and space would be revered amongst some of the most important exponents of progressive rock, dark ambient, Krautrock and pioneering synthesiser composition – not to mention sound design and art-house film scores.

As a protégé of François Bayle and Luc Ferrari who had studied classical music before immersing himself in found-sound manipulation and oscillators, Alain Pierre quickly became an enthusiastic go-to man for sound sculpture and technical studio proficiency in Belgium’s small film industry.

To the many generations of dedicated fans of the visual work of Philippe Druillet it might seem virtually impossible to adequately score the alien, futurist landscapes of the man who many called the ‘space architect’ (on account of his space age reductions of Gothic cathedrals, Art Nouveau and Indian temples) but once you have heard the sonic reactions of Alain Pierre on this first-ever dedicated Druillet documentary, Ô Sidarta, complete with his own equivalent sound palette, it will be difficult to ‘hear’ Druillet’s world via any other composer.

Despite Druillet’s truly incredible record sleeve designs for projects like cosmic disco ensemble Black Sun, concept albums such as Attention by Jean-Pierre Mirouze (composer of Le Mariage Collectif), Parisian metal bands like Sortilège, gatefold portraits of Jimi Hendrix, later period albums by William Sheller and most relevantly on albums by Igor Wakhévitch (Docteur Faust, 1971) as well as separate releases by both Richard Pinhas and Georges Grünblatt (both from the cosmic prog outfit Heldon), it is fair to say that this criminally unreleased album by Alain Pierre would conjure up the closest synergy between sound and vision that either artist would come close to.

Backed with a rare recording of a one-off concert at the Université libre de Bruxelles in October 1976 – under its original title Notions de physique intérieure (Notions Of Interior Physics) – revealing a very similar set of movements and soundscapes found on Ô Sidarta.

Licenced with the full cooperation of composer Alain Pierre and remastered from the original master tapes.