Eliane Tapes is a series of music dedicated to the vast amount of work and the huge influence by Éliane Radigue.
For many musicians working in the field of drone (a term Radigue does not use for her music) and other forms of minimal music someway, known and unknown, the work of Eliane Radigue is an influence on what they are doing. With her work she did so many groundbreaking things that in modern electronic and electro-acoustic music her influence can’t be ignored.

With Vection we welcome Elif Yalvaç to this series of releases, with music inspired by Radigue her “L’île Re-sonante“. 

Vection

Ever since my childhood, women artists have been particularly inspiring to me. It started with rock music and electronica, evolving into where I am today.
When I first listened to “L’Île re-sonante”, it changed my world. That a woman created this and pioneered something timeless was mesmerising for me. I love this piece so much that I dedicated a whole episode to it on my podcast with Jono Podmore – Talk to the Chip.
The sonorities and harmonics that gradually evolve into a beautiful ethereal world of sounds with ARP 2500 and field recordings – simple but also sophisticated.
Then I further delved into the work of Eliane Radigue. She had been creating ambient electronic music long before the term “ambient” was coined. That she is still around us is such a valuable thing, and we should all make her feel that. I am honoured to contribute to this, even if it is little – the little I can do by getting inspired and creating a work as part of a series that has her name in it. It is truly an honour. Her music and approaches keep on inspiring mine. I am grateful that she exists.

Track titles have references to sky objects and physical phenomena as well as events that affect me in my life as I observe my environment, while listening to the sounds, sometimes alongside music such as those created by Radigue herself. These include dramatic facts and stories that happen to some sky objects. Each track is connected to one another. In this manner, they make a whole track together as in a concept album. I do not use a lot of equipment when I make music. I like to keep my setup minimal and make the best of limitations, pushing the boundaries. In doing so, I used my own Max/MSP patches to process the sounds, usually with granular synthesis, FM synthesis, and wavetable synthesis. I also used my Game Boy and electric guitar as my main instruments. There are also glimpse of field recordings blended with music. My absolute pitch means that I hear musical sounds in anything I hear or listen to and this influences my approach to field recording and everyday sounds, which is something I tried to capture in this album.

— Elif Yalvaç 

Reviews

Vital Weekly, Bauke van der Wal

Ambient Blog, Peter van Cooten

Moving Furniture Records, the unstoppable and persistent Dutch label for electronic and experimental music, runs a sub-series named Eliane Tapes. Named, of course, after Éliane Radigue, whose work inspired many artists in the field of drone or minimal electronic music. Éliane herself gave her approval to the series, which is a quality trademark in itself.

Elif Yalvaç‘s Vection is the seventh release in this series and is the first one released on CD (previous titles were released on cassette). Yalvaç holds an MA degree in Sonic arts (from Istanbul Technical University), and currently works in the UK teaching electronic music in London and Electronic Music Composition at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU). She has always found inspiration in women artists, Eliane Radigue and the composition L’Île Resonante in particular.

Her music embraces opposites: ‘microsound glitches and slow builds; celestial beauty and abrasive energy’. While heavily influenced by (and dedicated to) Eliane Radigue, Vection is far more ‘dynamic’ (I could even say ‘dramatic’) than Radigue’s drone works.
To create her music, Elif uses MAX/MSP patches to ‘process the sounds usually with granular synthesis, FM synthesis, and wavetable synthesis’, also adding electric guitar, some field recordings, and sounds from her Game Boy.
The titles refer to ‘sky objects and physical phenomena as well as events that affect me in my life as I observe my environment’, and while the 33 minutes are divided into five tracks, they can (and should) be heard as one single composition.

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 Subjectivisten, Jan Willem Broek

Elif Yalvaç is a Turkish composer and musician currently living in the United Kingdom. She has been described as an ambient artist, but that does not do her work justice. Although you could classify the output under that heading, her music is full of contrasting sounds, which still go together beautifully and make it exciting. For example, abrasive sounds versus serene beauty, densely packed microsounds versus vast soundscapes and so on. She does this with guitars, synthesizers, laptop, field recordings and Game Boy, among other things. She uses this to create her idiosyncratic creations.

That is the case again on Vection, released on Eliane Tapes. It is a sub-label or actually series of Moving Furniture Records, dedicated to the enormous body of work and influence of Éliane Radigue, who was already making ambient music and drones before the terms existed. In her typical way, Yalvaç has created 5 compositions with the aforementioned instruments, which you will rarely recognize. The titles contain references to sky objects and physical phenomena.

The music is extremely minimal and veers towards ambient with drones, but when you really sit down for a moment you hear how subtle and rich it all is, full of glitches, electro-acoustic elements and the like. Sometimes even sounds, like in “Theia”, that nod to her more rock-oriented project Diaries Of Destruction, although here she blurs them and only uses them to shape her landscapes. There is a lot to discover in the silence. It has become a mesmerizing and sublime album, which otherwise fits perfectly into Radigue’s line.