These works are fantastic.. The two long “Ambiances” take you into sound worlds where you feel surrounded by pure nature but somehow an abstract, almost alienating version of it. The “Images” take this abstraction a bit further, they sound more electronic. “Jeu 1” is a curious piece, with breaths and sighs by (I guess) the composer himself.

This reissue documents Knud Viktor’s only two releases on record – Images and Ambiances – both released in 1972 on the french label L’Oiseau Musicien, and composed by Viktor in and around his home in Luberon, in the south of France. The two original albums are now combined into one double-release.
Includes an essay on Knud Viktor by Danish sound artist and writer Morten Søndergaard.

In the wake of his passing in 2013, the life’s work of sound artist Knud Viktor has resurfaced in Denmark, where he had been something of a well-kept secret, despite having been regarded as a well-established artist in France.
Knud Viktor was born on the island of Samsø in 1924 and studied at the Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In the early 1960s, he moved to the Luberon-mountain in Provence, famous for its unique light and colourful skies. Once he was there, however, he found something else that was just as, or even more, imposing on the senses than the light—the rich soundscapes of nature. He thus began to record them at their abundant sources — the hissing songs of the cricket, the drumming of raindrops, the fluttering of wine flies, the distant howls of the farmer, the long roars of a rockfall, the thudding of a bird’s beak on a window—and so, in his studies, sound became his primary artistic medium as he himself became, of his own coinage, a sound painter.

Tracks

1. Ambiance 1 23:38
2. Ambiance 2 27:46
3. Image 1 09:26
4. Image 3 08:17
5. Image 2 10:28
6. Jeu 1 04:02

The utmost care has gone into creating a reproduction that is as faithful as possible to the original works. These have been transferred from the original analog master tapes and have not been remastered to any other extent than to prepare them for the vinyl reproduction. Thus, Knud Viktor’s pieces appear with the same degree of tape hiss, hum and other “artefacts” related to his aesthetics, compositional process and tools. Front and back cover reproduces the original cover art. (label notes)