Roberta
Settels is an American composer and industrial designer, currently living in
Stockholm, Sweden. She studied composition at Juliard in New York, and during
the
70-ties and 80-ties, composed electronic music in Stockholm at EMS, and in Paris
at IRCAM, and studied with the composeres Pierre Boulez and Iannis Xenakis
Later she created her own studio.
Isolation from 1985 is her only released recording. It was released on her private
label
“Music in Crisis”.
Although ‘Isolation’ was composed in 1985, most parts of it sound
very fresh and
contemporary. Very unique for it’s time, the timbres and formal progression
of the
work bare little resemblance to the electroacoustic maximalism of the period.
Rather it
shares aesthetics with contemporary genres such as Lowercase and Microsound.
The music, all generated by pure analog means, contains elements of extreme
minimalism and splicing-techniques derived from the tape-music tradition. Even
though the work, making clever use of sine-waves and white noise, it is very
minimal
in it’s expression, and very clearly communicates the emotional states
of lonliness
and isolation which are it’s conceptual aim.
The work is divided into four parts: Landscape With 3 tape-recorders And…
,
Scenario, Isolation (Meinhof In Memoriam) and P1 – Information? , forming
a
perceived whole.
This reissue comes in a limited edition of 250 copies with a custom-made plastic
sleeve, with theoriginal cover and cover-notes in Swedish, English, German and
French, written and designed by the composer.
