Another precious find from Dead Cert featuring foundational concrète experiments from the director of IPEM, Belgium’s equivalent of the Radiophonic Workshop. Transferred from the original mastertapes by Andrew Popplewell and remastered by Gareth Mallinson and Matt Colton, limited edition pressing of 500 copies Dead Cert illuminate three unique and chilling electro-acoustic compositions by the pioneering head of Belgium’s Institute of Psychoacoustic and Electronic Music dating between 1958-1971. Born 1904, in Roeselare, Belgium, Louis De Meester was a self taught musician who, after travelling widely as a professional player, professed himself an autodidactic composer by 1945, proceeding to become “Music Modulator” at The BRT (Belgian Radio and TV broadcasting company) and later head producer and artistic director at IPEM in Ghent between 1962-1969. His work, covering chamber music, lieder, cantatas and concertantes has been subject of renewed focus recently thanks to reissues such as Metaphon’s 50 year anniversary compilation of IPEM recordings, and now thanks to the efforts of Andy Votel and Demdike Stare’s Dead-Cert imprint, we’re presented with three of his finest pieces plucked from the archive of Alpha Brussels and carefully transferred from tape with little to no further processing by Andy Popplewell. They include ‘Incantations’ (1958), which recently appeared on the I.P.E.M. compilation, and the string-heavy piece, ‘Spielerei’ (1970), plus a very necessary reissue of the outstanding ‘Mimodrama’ (1971), which was also reissued by Keith Fullerton Whitman’s Creel Pone in 2008 and was last available on vinyl in 1974. ‘Mimodrama’ is the record’s biggest attraction; a 26 minute composition for magnetophone patching elements of previous works into a sort of biographical account travelling from oneiric electronics to more defined concrète shapes and textures to almost arcane Mittel European folk melodies and rhythms.
