Vietnam Study
2012 · Shame File Music sham068 · Melbourne, Australia
- Artist
- Val Stephen
- Title
- Vietnam Study
- Release
- Electrogenesis
- Year
- 2012
- Label
- Shame File Music # sham068
- Format
- CD · Archival
- Language
- Instrumental
- Country
- Melbourne, Australia
- Songwriter
- Val Stephen
- Genre
- Electronic · Experimental
- Primary theme
- Post-War
Annotation — Australian & New Zealand Songs
Dr. Val Stephen, an anaesthetist born in 1919, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, who became an electronic music composer, inspired by European experimental music in the late 1950s. He died 1998. In 2012, Electrogenesis (Shame File Music # sham068) was released, which according to its notes, was a compilation of his experimental music taken from "recordings on nearly one hundred reel-to-reel tapes and twenty-five audio cassettes that formed Stephen's private collection" - examined and catalogued by John Whiteoak and Clinton Green, mastered by Greg Wadley (March 2012). The original tapes are at stored in the National Film and Sound Archive, in Canberra, Australia.1 This included the song "Vietnam Study", thought to have been recorded around 1973, so during the Vietnam War-era. The song effectively reconstructs the unsettling sounds of war, such as gunfire, intercepted occasionally by a chorus of singing, possibly Vietnamese.Sources1Bandcamp↩
Annotation by Justin A. Brummer
Notes
Composed 1973; released 2012 on a CDr compilation of his tapes (mastered by Greg Wadley, March 2012). Reconstructs the sounds of war with gunfire and, at moments, singing.
About the artist
Dr Val Stephen (1919-1998) - anaesthetist born in Melbourne, Victoria, who composed electronic music from the late 1950s; his tapes are held by the National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra.