Elaine Radigue at the Southbank Centre Reviewed

Source: The Quietus.

When she left New York, crossing the Atlantic to return to her native France, after an early 70s spent sharing a studio at NYU with Rhys Chatham and Laurie Spiegel, Radigue left something behind: the keyboard of her ARP 2500 synthesizer. She had no more need of notes. No more sharps and flats and clefs and crotchets. Only waves.

The Trilogie de la Mort, composed after her return to Paris, between 1988 and 1993, begins with no more than a ripple. But each of its three sections opens up from a simple pulsation to a vast expanse of manifoldly fluttering frequencies, all swelling and cascading together. In the right space, it is capable of a very fragile sort of magic.