Dopo il meraviglioso strings.lines, il canadese Nicolas Bernier ha pubblicato un altrettanto suggestivo album per la tedesca Hronir (usure.paysage) e un doppio cd per l’etichetta specializzata in ambient music, Home Normal (Music for a Piano; Music for a Book). Sempre del 2012 è Travaux mécaniques, presentato dalla Empreintes Digitales nella solita elegante veste di DVD-Audio custodito in un bel box di cartone. Al suo interno cinque nuove tracce di Bernier presentate in surround 3.1/5.1, stereo, mp3 e aac (320kbps).

Dans le ventre de la machine è la personale “battaglia” del compositore canadese contro la “macchina”. Nel senso letterario del termine: Nicolas entra nel corpo di un dispositivo meccanico costruito da un amico carpentiere e ne descrive la natura con l’aiuto di un sensore piezoelettrico e un microfono a contatto. Sul finale si sentono le parole del celebre discorso di Mario Savio tenuto nel 1964 davanti agli attivisti di Berkeley.

Cresciuto in pieno evo digitale, Bernier sente nostalgia per quei dispositivi che gli ricordano l’infanzia: cineprese, videoregistratori o semplicemente vecchi giocattoli. Liaisons mécaniques è una descrizione acustica di tali oggetti, un racconto per suoni di superfici ricche di particolari.

Le suggestioni spaziali di Les chambres de l’atelier sono più evidenti ascoltate nella versione surround 5.1, ma anche nel più canonico formato stereo rendono bene la capacità di Bernier di descrivere spazi utilizzando solo gli “effetti”, creando forti dinamiche e giocando sulle profondità. Nelle sue mani il suono acquista qualità microscopiche, calibrando le orecchie su dettagli apparentemente impercettibili.

The Concert international presented by Musiques & Recherches on February 27, 2013 at Espace Senghor in Brussels (Belgium) will feature works by Elizabeth Anderson, Adrian Moore, Robert Normandeau, Zuriñe F Gerenabarrena, and Irene Pacini. There will be a pre-concert talk with Elizabeth Anderson about her new 8-track work Solar Winds which premiered in October 2012 in Mexico.

The demanding music radio show Délire actuel (CFLX-FM 95.5, Sherbrooke, Quebec) unveiled today its top 30 experimental music albums you shouldn’t have missed in 2012. This list culls 30 titles, the 2012 crème de la crème in demanding music, i.e. the avant-gardist or experimental fringe in every music genre (contemporary, avant-garde jazz, free improvisation, avant-rock, electronica, etc.). […]

Musiques & Recherches continues its pioneers concert series with a portrait concert of composer Beatriz Ferreyra on January 23, 2013 at Espace Senghor in Brussels (Belgium).

Subtlety is also a keyword to bring into the classroom as we approach Scènes (empreintes DIGITALes, IMED 11111) by Pete Stollery, an electroacoustic composer who studied under the great Jonty Harrison and is now a Professor at the University of Aberdeen, where he is a strong advocate for new music in Scotland via the agency of InvisiblEARts. Since Radiophonic Music is never out of fashion, readers may initially be drawn to the six minute track Serendipities and Synchronicities, which was composed for a stage play about Delia Derbyshire. In it, Stollery attempts to express his personal affinities with Delia’s work, by refracting it through his own very similar compositional methods. There are also two pieces excerpted from his ongoing Gordon Soundscape project, which is a plan to compile an aural map of Aberdeenshire, through collaging field recordings and processing of same; his chief aim as gazetteer in this instance is to identify and record endangered sounds, such as certain activities found within the dying distillery industry. He also aims to map Paris in like manner, on scènes, rendez-vous which has its origins in his childhood memory of a 1967 Claude Lelouch documentary, and uses information from the film as rules to govern his sound-gathering and compositional actions. Fields of Silence is also based on field recordings, themed around the intriguing idea that a field of grain falls silent “after it has been harvested”. This very much reminds me of a Ray Bradbury story 3. Or that Roald Dahl story where an inventor is able to hear the cries of plants being cut by secaturs 4. Stollery somehow manages to discover sound events and textures within the mown stubble itself, as well as collaging in “before and after” sound events from combine harvesters. In all ind value="Pete Stollery">Stollery seems to be a thoughtful and gentle composer, one who wouldn’t want to impose anything on the landscape, but rather cares to ask interesting questions about our relationship to our sonic environment. In some cases I find his explanatory notes more interesting than the sounds he produces. This is particularly so with Back to Square One, where he writes with something approaching passion about the excitement he feels when listening to the “musicality” of sports commentators on the radio and telly, yet very little of that passion or excitement has found its way into the muffled, pedestrian music.

The winning work of the 13rd Música Viva Electroacoustic Composition Competition are Buoy by David Berezan.