This compilation of Swedish experimental composer Åke Hodell’s “text-sound compositions” from between 1963 and 1977 was collated by Hodell himself and Mats Lindström, and signed off two days before Hodell’s death in 2000. It’s now being re-released on what would have been his 100th birthday. It selects a variety of pieces spanning decades of work, remastered from the original tapes- and at times edited as well, though only with Hodell’s consent- into a plush package.

Hodell referred to his work as “elektronismer” or “text-sound composition” and for the most part this term covers field recordings and sound effects work, with opening pieces like the looped military march counting of “Law & Order” and the gunshot sound effects repeated and decontextualised into abstraction in “Structures III” wandering a grey area between art and raw sound effects akin to those you might find on a 1970’s era BBC sound effects LP.

After a life understandably scarred by war- Hodell spent several years in hospital during the Second World War after a crash as a fighter pilot- there’s an understandable and macabre emphasis on war sounds, guns, crashes, bombs and explosions. As it progresses a handful of broader found sound elements are introduced- ferry and other transport noises, windy atmospheres, some that I think are treated farmyard sounds- but the military sounds are never too far away.

Inbetween these are vocal-only works. “General Bussig” is an example of a vocal-driven experiment, standalone spoken word exercises in stuttering, alliteration and scat-style syllable-bending that apparently had a strong political message when first composed and performed, a message which is certainly hard to identify now. “igevar (Presentarms)” stretches this idea even further, taking one strained vocal note and looping it repeatedly so that it begins to take the form of a broken yoik or ballad before the listener gets so accustomed to it that it stops being a loop at all. “Numro Ba Besch” sounds like a short experiment with deliberately stuttering a CD player, yet was produced years before CD players were invented, an experiment with gated tape work that “220 Volt Buddha” later explores in much more broody depth.

The first disc contains 20 mostly shorter pieces and proceeds as a montage of contrasts, while the second and third discs contain longer works, most of them over 20 minutes long each, which tell much more developed but open-ended stories involving a small amount of spoken word among classic radioplay-style effects like police sirens and train works which, devoid of traditional narrative fiction dialogue, leaves you to decide for yourself whether you’re listening to a classic documentary with the narration switched off, or a made-up tale of city life and portraiture. 1960’s documentaries often blurred those lines for artistic effect, and the same principle is at play here. It’s given something of an ironic twist when it leverages wholesale some 1950’s rock and roll instrumental music and abruptly interjects S.O.S. messages into it in the quite theatrical “USS Pacific Ocean”.

“Cerberus, the Hellhound” has a slightly more full-bodied collection of dialogue that feels somewhat sci-fi at times but still incoherent, in the nicest way, a thought-provoking melée of alien invasion and post-war urban regeneration that draws no conclusions for you. “The Road To Nepal” has a very curious stripped-back electronic section that’s hard to put a finger on and which sounds, very loosely, like a brief form of proto-techno.

“Where Is Eldridge Cleaver?” is a thinly disguised 13-minute collection of politicised chanting and shouting, dotted with just enough sound effects and compositional work to qualify it as art instead of just recorded shouting. It’s not necessarily clever but the simplicity and rawness of it helps add to its power and it’s an interesting listen as a historical document, a European expression of support for the black freedom movement, which (for fair warning) contains a fair few trigger words as well. Less successful, with the benefit of decades of hindsight, are pieces like “Mr Smith In Rhodesia”, a piece which contrasts school-style repetition of the phrase “Mr. Smith is a good white man” with a whispered voice “Mr. Smith is a murderer” in a manner that undoubtedly seemed like a strong expression at the time, but which has not aged well and which exhibits the naivety and on-the-nose attitude of a teenage experimental theatre class, especially with the final and rather Orwellian chorus of “God Save Our Smith” to “God Save The Queen”- a trick which is repeated almost verbatim in the final track “Spirit Of Ecstacy, Racing Car Opera”.

Emotive and quite single-minded musique concrete material, this three-disc collection of a singular voice in relatively early modern sound-art is comprehensive to the point of being immersive, but if you’re not already familiar with Hodell’s work, then a shorter sampler might be more a more gratifying introduction than this nearly-four-hour experience.