A lot of the best new music can't be captured in sound bites - you have to listen for a long time. Of no one is that truer than Eliane Radigue, who lives in France, but whose unarticulated time sense brings her closer to La Monte Young in sensibility than to anyone in Europe. Listen to her exquisitely-sculpted electronic works for two, three, even seven minutes, and you may hear nothing but a drone. But over a far longer period, her electronic drones thicken, begin to pulse, and change into complexly gritty textures so gradually that you suddenly wonder why you didn't notice the change. Over the long haul her works crescendo into glacially slow climaxes, bristling with harmonics, inducing in the listener an altered state of ecstatic spirituality. Some of her pieces form backgrounds for Tibetan stories about the saint Milarepa. But her masterpiece so far is Trilogie de la Mort, whose three-hour, three-disc length gives full scope to her symphonic transformations.

Trilogie de la Mort, Lovely Music XI 119

Mila's Journey Inspired by a Dream, Lovely Music LCD 2002

Kyema, Intermediate States, XI 10

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