This collection of Coriún Aharonián’s electronic works, composed between 1967 and 1984, is great! Most of the sounds are transformed acoustic sounds, made with instruments and voice and taken from the environment. There are occasionally words used as in radio theater. The compositions are all lively and interesting and what’s really amazing is that Aharonian’s music has been such a well-kept secret all these years. But it’s not just the music, it’s also that the spirit behind the music is complex and forceful, as Aharonian hints in the liner notes. He is eloquent, not only as a man of his time but as a man of his place (which is Montevideo, Uruguay). Speaking of the title piece Gran Tiempo (1974, Great Times), he writes: “I think it expresses in a quite precise manner that Latin American idiomatic way between the ironical and the transcendental, between the sad and the very happy, between the pain and the “no, brother, it’s nothing,“ between the circumstantial doubt and the historical certainty. That Latin American way to define our moment of the seventies . . .” Aharonián has been very active in South American musical life (and non-musical life) during the past many years.
