Christian Clozier’s first CD, volume 2 in the Chrysopée Électronique series, contains two pieces, Quasars, which had first been released as an LP, and Markarian 205. Quasars consists of six sections, the first of which opens with what could easily be termed a heroic fanfare. That fortunately settles down to whirring and chattering, with an occasional low frequency tone. In all six sections, the basic idea is transformation, sounds and phrases morphing not only within each section but across sections as well.

High bubbly noises over a drone in section two, for instance, are mimicked in section three by high bird calls over the sound of surf, sounds which become electronic and then “concrete” again right before the end.

No single clip could capture the ever-changing, ever constant quality of Quasars. The extract, from section four, merely contains a few illustrative changes.

–

Markarkian 205 is also about change, but the idea here is proliferation rather than transformation. That is, in Quasars, the elements change into other things—bird calls into electronic noises, dance tunes into simple pulses. In Markarian 205, the process is additive, new things constantly being added, and taken away, and other new things taking their place. It’s almost as if one is hearing the aural equivalent of stop action photography of plants taking over a field.

In the first section, of three, the proliferation is loud and energetic, even at times frenetic. In the second, everything is very small, tiny sounds, very soft. But the principle is the same. Only in the third section does anything like transformation happen—it is sonically very much like section two, only more propulsive. It is as if the sounds of two, which floated in empty space, have been marshalled into formation and set to march across the void.

–

This and all Clozier CDs may be found at Mnemosyne.