In La Pièce (“The room”), Carole Rieussec and Jean-Christophe Camps (aka the electroacoustic duo Kristoff K.Roll) took a different direction. Leaving the studio behind, they devised an elaborate set-up allowing them to perform live what most tape music composers do in the studio. Equipped with a sound diffusion system, electronics and instruments they are able to perform music on sounding objects, transform sounds in real time, and play back pre-recorded material. Xavier Charles’ clarinet makes one with the set-up. As an improviser, his discourse fuels the K.Rolls, but he also has control over his sound by playing in a number of microphones, all with different diffusion settings and altered by different electronics. Thus we have in La Pièce Charles’ “true” playing (also miked), the alteration and spacialization of his music through the microphones, the possible alteration of his music by the K.Rolls, the K.Rolls’ prepared material and their live electronics. Sound cluttered? It is not, on the contrary. The music breathes, limited to delicate gestures. Charles’ was already far into the process of stripping down his playing. He focuses on multiphonics and drones, much like what he would do with John Butcher and Axel Dörner for The Contest of Pleasures. The sound poetry of the electroacousticians balances out the aridity of the clarinet to create something challenging but very much absorbing. The K.Rolls would develop something similar for Le petit bruit d’à-côté du cœur du monde with saxophonist Daunik Lazro.