Mycenae-Alpha is as terrifying as the drawings from the giant hand that composed it.

🎧 Full article: dub.sh/theguardian

🎬 Full video: dub.sh/xenakis

An experimental singer needs to have 400 screams at her disposal, so Mycenae-Alpha can be a compositional model.

The Mycenaeans were a Greek warrior elite, their warfare and architecture so formidable as to seem built by Cyclops.

I had been working on my first vocal pieces and had already performed Wild Women with Steak-knives (the Homicidal Love Song for Solo Scream) — later appearing on The Litanies of Satan (1982).

This work confirmed I was headed in the right direction.

His music is ferocious and difficult to perform — but extremely innovative.

The violence in Mycenae-Alpha attracted me instantly. I realised the composer was a master warrior who used music as a flight of harpoons.

This is the first sound work Xenakis created for the Upic computerised composition tool he built to turn hand drawings into electronic music.

As a Greek resistance fighter, he had half his face blown apart by shrapnel and was imprisoned many times.

The song is a Spanish song originally.
Galás wanted very much to honor the original composition.

Thanks to deesurfinjay for the information.