One of the truly great figures of C20 music, Xenakis from the first avoided – and  transcended - the limitations of serialism, following Edgard Varese’s leap into an aesthetic that embraced the notion of organised sound as a pursuit that could not be contained by any definition of ‘music’. Like Varese he revolutionised the sonic potential of both acoustic and electroacoustic resources. This box collects his electroacoustic works together for the first time, in a definitive edition of - often newly realised - stereo reductions. Like Stockhausen, Xenakis, was committed to spatialisation and the movement of sound in space, so these works were orginally designed for diffusion though multiple speakers dispersed around or through large, often open air, spaces - so the balance and quality of any stereo reduction is critical – and these are exceptional.

Before joining Pierre Schaeffer’s Groupe de Musique Concrete in 1956, Xenakis studied with Honneger and Milhaud, but from the first he presented a wholly new way of working with sound - and listening to this collection it is hard to believe that he was able achieve such impressive clarity and complexity – not to mention novelty - with the equipment available at the time. The first CD documents his first major elecroacoustic work, Diamorphoses (1957); then the extraordinarily prescient Concret PH (created for the entrance to the Phillips pavilion at the 1958 World’s Fair in Bruxelles - which he designed for Le Corbusier as a platform for Edgar Varese’s [spatialised, multi-speaker] Poeme Electronique); Orient Accident (1960) – a film commission – with more rhythmic content than any other piece here; and Bohor (1962), ‘the greatest scandal of electroacoustic music’ (Chion) - a visionary event made up (not that you can hear how) from a Laotian mouth organ, amplified Byzantine jewellery, crotales and hammerings on the inside of a piano: ‘You start with a sound made up of many particles’, Xenakis wrote, ‘then see how you can make it change imperceptibly, growing, changing and developing, until an entirely new sound results.’. CD 2 offers Hibiki hana-ma (1970) generated from highly treated orchestral sounds and biwa; Mycenae Alpha - and the monumental Polytope de Cluny (1972-4), a 24-minute world unto itself (Xenkis’ polytopes were mutimedia events, combining architecture, light, text and sound). CD 3 offers Persepolis (1971) - the longest and most celebrated of the polytopes (55 min) - this version is a remix from the original 8 track tapes. CD 4 has La legende d’Eer (1977-78) minimal but devastating and perhaps the most radical of the polytopes and, lastly, on CD 5, the late works, purely electronic and fairly described as noise music: taurhiphanie, sliding and roaring, and voyage absolu des unari vers Andromede – both titles ‘drawn’ by Xenakis using a graphic interface of his own design. Then come Gendy 3 and S.709, very late experiments in self-generating computer music, interesting but not, by my standards, great. Overall these are deeply immersive and amazingly complex works and need decent volume and good quality speakers – or headphones -  to achieve their intended effects. The genius (1-4) is in the organic nature of the sound, which is not electronic in origin and predates sampling and contemporary digital technologies, relying instead on the incalculable complexities of acoustic sound. Monumental, but human. The whole set comes in a sturdy box with an excellent, large-sized, 24 page booklet with texts, photographs, diagrams and graphic scores. An essential pillar in the edifice of C20 genius.