LOGOS

When it comes to the ballet or opera as a means of entertainment I feel like an outsider. This is the world of the rich and as a middle class Canadian give me RUSH and the world of "Rock" music please. "Logos" was created as the music for a ballet, and after hearing this I admit that maybe this world of ballet does have something for me. I mean some of those ART ZOYD recordings are also the audio for ballets. We're talking some dark and experimental music with these two projects.

Igor's father was an art director in France but born in the Ukraine. He and his family escaping to the south of France. Igor being taught piano by a classical composer when he was just six years old. He would grow to be influenced greatly by contemporary avant-garde performers and eventually hanging around with some legends who were impressed by Igor's work. His meeting with Terry Riley influenced his "Hathor" album significantly. And really those first three records he released are the ones to focus on from the early seventies. "Logos", "Doctor Faust" and "Hathor" are all are quite different from one another.

This debut is described in the promo for the 2012 reissue as such "Originally recorded in 1970, this is the perfect introduction to Wakhevitch dark, powerful and often menacing sound world. An unlikely mixture of 20th century classical avant-garde, both orchestral and electronic, and psychedelic rock courtesy of french psych-prog band TRIANGLE." Igor was influenced by Russian thinker Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff and also Kabbalistic and Alchemistic traditions, coupled with Igor's vision of cosmic art for the 20th century.

As far as the music goes, this is soundscape music that is dark and haunting much of the time. Unique sounding with the use of voices, like mellotron choirs for example but different. This is similar to modern classical and dark ambient. A lot of these eight tracks blend into each other. This is a very uniform sounding record. And very much headphone music. I do prefer this to his next one called "Doctor Faust" but this is certainly not for everybody. Salvador Dali was a fan and used Igor's music for his work related to operas.

The enjoyment level is not at that 4 star level but this album in my opinion deserves that rating for other reasons. Not the least of which is that Igor was blazing new trails, and that counts for a lot.

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