Elaine Radigue — musique concrete to ARP and beyond

A contemporary of Laurie Spiegel, Elaine Radigue is a French composer who has worked extensively with the ARP 2500 synthesizer, although some of her first synthesizer compositions were made on a Buchla that was installed in the studio she shared with Spiegel.

Prior to using these machines, she had been classically trained on piano, but gravitated towards creating electronic sounds, at first working with established artists composing “musique concrete” — a method of composition using recorded sounds, manipulated using a variety of effects and tape manipulation techniques, and then moving on to her own work that employed long tape loops and tape feedback. Much of her synthesized music could be compared to much of the drone and ambient music of today. Most of her work of the past twenty or so years has been composed for acoustic instruments, instead of synthesizers.

As usual, I’ve prepared a selection of videos. Many of these are in French, but subtitles are available for some. I’ve arranged the playlist with interviews first, followed by a selection of her music. Many of these are quite long, so I’ve mixed the list up to intersperse the long tracks with shorter excerpts.