Danses Organiques: Cinema Pour l'oreille de Luc Ferrari

by Thom Jurek Here goes: Composer and cultural madman Luc Ferrari had an idea to record a composition for electronic tape utilizing the voices of two women getting acquainted and then making love in his studio, splice in found and constructed sounds, and write a text to accompany it. He then had the sounds cut, clipped, sliced, and spindled together, edited seemingly at random -- but we already know what comes at the end don't we? To realize a particular phenomenon, would that be the organic attraction between women? Nah. The two women Ferrari employed in the "realization" of this work didn't know each other prior to stepping into his studio, or, supposedly know what he was all about. Does this reek of the '60s or what? The weightiest thing you can say about this work is that because of its use of keyboards, percussion, the near whispering voice of the composer himself reading some oblique text on systems and eros is that it removes the opportunity for almost any puerile realization on the part of the listener. Was this Ferrari's intent? Possibly, but it's doubtful. More than likely, as the composer of works such as "Cellule 75" and "Heterozygote," his intent was to shock and disrupt. It's too bad that Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin did a better job with a pop single the same year doing the same thing with a heterosexual couple -- themselves. Danses Organiques is easily the biggest piece of crap in Ferrari's catalog. Boys will be boys, or, in Ferrari's case, dirty old men will be dirty old men.