Pierre Perret ‘Gaïa La Terre’ k7 (ca 1990)

I’m offering 3 tracks by french sound ecologist Pierre Perret.

01. ND cassette side B (18:21)
02. Gaïa La Terre side A (14:25)
03. Gaïa La Terre side B (13:59)

The first is from a split cassette issued by Texas ND magazine in their Fragment series (FragmenT 1). This tape actually launched the series initiated by Daniel Plunkett at the beginning of the 1990s. The A side featured Jeff Greinke’s ambient music and B side had what is presumably an excerpt from Perret’s magnum opus: ‘Gaïa La Terre’. I assume Perret released a bunch of recordings under the ‘Gaïa La Terre’ series, Gaïa being the french equivalent to Gaia, the greek goddess personifying Earth. This comes without the cover or booklet – I lost them, sorry. The picture above I photoshoped with an actual scan of the k7 shell. But I remember seeing Pierre Perret’s name in various music zines during the 90s; he was part of the network, sending many tapes abroad. It seems Pierre Perret never had any LP or CD available.

Then, tracks #2+3 are the proper ‘Gaïa La Terre’ cassette release, as far as I can tell. My issue of this cassette comes without a cover, just a handwritten label on each side of the k7 itself. A 2:39 excerpt from this cassette can be listened to on this Last FM page. It seems someone is having fun over there, since Pierre Perret is also the name of a famous french singer & entertainer.

I’d say Pierre Perret was more an environmentalist than a sound ecologist, using concrete music and collage techniques to create dreamscapes of environmental sounds. Field recordings, female vocals, ethnic music recordings, electronic sounds, library tapes. Insects, birds, dogs, river sounds, engine noises, kids shouting, etc, abound throughout all 3 tracks. Concrete music by a hippy poet. Full marks.

Download.