The Montréal based label empreintes DIGITALes has just rereleased Corazón Road, a wonderful cd by the [French] electroacoustic duet Kristoff K.Roll (Carole Rieussec and Jean-Christophe Camps). This record was originally released on SONARt in 1993.

Kristoff K.Roll invites the listener on a trip to Central America and Corazón Road acts as the diary. Through the sounds of travelling, the snippets of conversation (in English, French and Spanish), the smiles of people encountered, the exhilaration of the discoveries but also the solitude and mostly the adventure into human nature, this record talks to the listener, it appeals to us. And it takes us on a 75-minute journey where electroacoustic art is not the austere object some would like to believe, but the artistic, emotive and humane transcription of an experience very hard to translate (I know: one of my research fields in literature — my day job — is travel literature). The electroacoustic art of Kristoff K.Roll is akin to Francis Dhomont’s aesthetics (a non-linear storyline, the importance of speech), particularly his Forêt profonde (also on empreintes DIGITALes [IMED 9634]).

Very strongly recommended: ★★★★

Corazón Road is an audio travelogue. Carole Rieussec and Jean-Christophe Camps traveled to Central America in December 1990-January 1991. During their pilgrimage in Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala, they recorded street sounds, testimonies, and the daily life of the friends they made. Back in France they worked together to create this electroacoustic suite. Field recordings, treated sounds, speech and snippets of real instruments come together to evoke their trip more than actually narrate it. Corazón Road is a set of memories blurred by elapsed time and the discrepancies found between two subjectivities. This, Kristoff K.Roll’s first album, can be considered as a rehearsal for Le petit bruit à côté du cœur du monde, their next major project following a trip to Western Africa. But where Le petit bruit will be developed both on stage and in the studio, Corazón Road is a studio-only affair and thus feels more conventional in terms of technique and discourse. It remains a gripping, immersive tale. The three main suites (Aquí en Yucatán, Belize City, and Guatemala) are separated by short interludes that bring back the spoken theme established in the prologue Danse de Corazón Road. The cycle ends with the recapitulative Le Pacifique, in which timpani and cymbals evoke the turmoils of the sea. The album was first released in 1993 on SONARt and reissued in 1999 on empreintes DIGITALes.

A sonic film, very much in the tradition of Metamkine’s “cinema for your ears” series, but on a much grander scale. This is a condensed history of Central America told in a very bizarre manner, charting from the Hispanic invasion to the present day, it’s a sonic journey on a troubled road, with extensive use of field recordings, sonic collage and an abundant amount of musique-concrete and electronic processing.

Corazón Road est une sorte de carnet de voyage musical d’Amérique Centrale. Ce n’est ni un document ethnologique ni un reportage journalistique mais une réalisation sonore musicale. Carole Rieussec et Jean-Christophe Camps alternent parties purement musicales et pièces radiophoniques. À écouter tranquillement chez soi comme on regarde un ouvrage sur les prises réalisées par un photographe que l’on apprécie.

Kristoff K.Roll is Jean-Christophe Camps and Carole Rieussec, two Paris-based composers with backgrounds in electroacoustic music and acousmatic composition. Latin-American inspired and Canadian-produced, this is world music at its un-labelled, un-cliched best. One of many rediscoveries, re-visions of America which were all the rage in the early nineties, Kristoff K.Roll’s work is a travel diary evoking a circuit in Latin America. Heard on the Corazón Road: sounds of humans in unspecified motion, groaning of doors, synthesized swishing of hammocks, sampled caresses of tropical rain, high hissing of tape birds, and ever-resurgent, the human voice — chattering children, crooning / complaining adults, tough Belize rappers, a patchwork of Mexican, Spanish, Québécois French, Caribbean-inflected English. This is an astounding humanistic collage, celebrating and commemorating the discoveries of the heart.

Dieses musikalische Tagebuch aus Mittel-amerika mischt elektronische Musik. Alltagsgerausche, Folkloristisches, politische Parolen und anderes mehr zu einem bunten Kosmos, der weder ethnologisches Dokument noch journalistische Reportahe sein will.