Rhizomes summarizes Stephan Dunkelman’s 1990s. Most of the seven works included on this CD were already available on a number of compilation albums (Aquaéra 1 on empreintes DIGITALes’ own Miniatures concrètes). Presented together, they form an interesting solo album. The key word to describe Dunkelman’s music is “movement.” He has worked extensively with choreographers and some of these pieces stem from music for dance. There is grace and fluidity in the stereo crisscrosses, the leaps and splits of his sounds. In that regard, Rituellipses is exemplary. Ample without aiming at grandeur, it impressively coordinates the dance of a number of “characters” in a movement that draws from a certain conception of serialism and ritualism, all to great effect. Dreamlike Shudder in an Airstream Part 1: For a Crumpled Woman, encountered at half point in the course of this hour of music, brings an element of disturbance. Its title already hints at something darker or oppressive. The piece is more cluttered and looms menacingly over the listener. The closing Thru, Above and Between approaches radio work (or hörspiel) from a purely musical point of view. Consciously evacuating any possible literary thinking, Dunkelman tries to come back to the essence of “cinema for the ear,” developing a narrative that will not translate into words but makes sense to the listener nonetheless. Through these pieces, the influence of Annette Vande Gorne rarely goes away — in the choice and use of concrete sounds, in the musical flow — but is well integrated to Dunkelman’s style. Academic but warm and with many fascinating facets, this album is definitely worth your time.

Simply put, this is a great project, well conceived and marvelously concretized. Arturo Parra, an excellent classical guitarist specialized in the modern repertoire, has commissioned electroacoustic pieces from four of Quebec’s most renown acousmatic composers: Stéphane Roy, Francis Dhomont, Gilles Gobeil and Robert Normandeau. Each work had to stand on its own (and some have been released on other CDs), but Parra also composed four pieces for guitar and tape using them. The eight pieces (tape only and mixed) were premiered at FIMAV 1998 as the program Parr(A)cousmatique. Four years later the label empreintes DIGITALes released Parra’s four mixed works plus a fifth piece composed with Mauricio Bejarano following the same method. The guitarist has managed to respect the spirit and idiosyncrasies of each composer while giving the cycle its own identity. The pure, untreated sound of the classical guitar could have felt like it was just pasted over the tape part. On the contrary, Parra’s playing creates a fully-integrated contrast with the electroacoustics. He uses extended techniques without banning the instrument’s (and his own) Spanish heritage. La basilique fantôme (with Roy) opens with flashes of typical guitar virtuosity that establish the setting of the whole cycle. That piece and L’envers du temps (with Normandeau) provide the best moments. In the latter, the guitarist elaborates a stunning discourse, a song that parallels a rich tape drone. Highly recommended to enthusiasts of electroacoustic music and contemporary acoustic guitar alike.

Hailing from Belgium, Stephan Dunkelman is a composer of acousmatic music. Once a student of Annette Vande Gorne, he shows interests in space and time relations within sonic movement — common to many such composers working from inside academic institutions. His music shares similarities with the works of Francis Dhomont, Gilles Gobeil and Vande Gorne. His first solo album, Rhizomes, came out in 2002.

Born in Brussels in 1956, Dunkelman first studied at his hometown Conservatoire Royal de Musique. He completed degrees in Electroacoustic Composition and Music History in 1989 and 1990, moment at which he completed his first important works. Signallures, finalist at the Concours Luigi Russolo in 1991, brought him his first laurels and also became one of his first pieces made available (on the 1996 CD Acousmatica). Rituellipses, Metharcana and Dreamlike Shudder in an Airstream Part 1: for a crumpled woman also won international distinctions and were released on compilation CDs. While working on his graduate degree in acousmatic composition with Vande Gorne, Dunkelman multiplied collaborations with visual artists and choreographers, thus further exploring the spatiality of sound. He has worked with sculptor Charlotte Marchal, painter Axel Miret, choreographer Michèle Noiret and fashion designer Azniv Afsar. The prestigious Quebecer electroacoustic label empreintes DIGITALes had included his short piece Aquaéra 1 on the compilation CD Miniatures concrètes in 1998 and four years later released his first solo album, Rhizomes, which includes the aforementioned pieces plus a few more. The album launch was accompanied by feature concerts in Montréal (as part of the 11th Rien à voir festival) and Brussels.

Arrivé au Québec en 1966, Christian Calon s’équipait d’un premier studio de composition électroacoustique en 1975, à l’âge de 25 ans. C’est durant les années 80 que ses premières œuvres furent remarquées (premier prix du Concours international Luigi Russolo en 1985). En 1989-90, il était vice-président de la Communauté électroacoustique canadienne et, en 1991, il repartait pour quelque temps en France afin d’assumer la responsabilité du Groupe de musique expérimentale de Marseille. Ses œuvres, dont plusieurs sont regroupées sur deux disques parus chez empreintes DIGITALes, lui ont valu de nombreuses distinctions. Il conçoit des pièces radiophoniques, des installations sonores et des musiques de concert.

Il y a déjà un bout de temps que Christian Calon travaille au spectacle auquel l’Association pour la création et la recherche électroacoustiques du Québec (ACREQ) nous permettra d’assister le 8 novembre prochain. La première ébauche du projet remportait en 1996 le prix Lynch-Staunton du Conseil des arts du Canada; en 1998, une première réalisation radiophonique en allemand et en anglais était diffusée sur les ondes de la radio allemande, puis au planétarium de Berlin (sur 89 haut-parleurs!). Cette version récoltait en 1999 le Grand Prix Marulic de l’Union européenne des radiodiffuseurs. En juin 2001, c’est à la Chaîne culturelle de Radio-Canada que fut réalisée et créée l’adaptation française dont nous aurons finalement la création sur scène, avec traitements et spatialisation, au Festival Elektra. J’ai rencontré le compositeur à son studio afin d’avoir un avant-goût de l’œuvre et d’en discuter avec lui.

Le Projet Ulysse est presque aussi dense que l’Odyssée d’Homère dont, bien entendu, il s’inspire. Viennent s’y greffer des références au Ulysses de James Joyce, au satellite Ulysses de l’agence spatiale européenne et des hommages à la musique concrète… «J’ai commencé à composer la pièce sans trop savoir où j’allais aboutir, explique Calon; je me rendais compte cependant que je m’embarquais sur un gros bateau et, de fait, j’ai débuté en 1995 et je suis actuellement en train de finir. De faire la réalisation radiophonique, c’est une chose, mais la transposition sur scène en est une autre. Lorsqu’il m’arrive, à l’occasion, de diffuser en concert une pièce qui contient de la voix, des paroles, je ressens un manque; le manque de la présence du corps. Dans cette pièce-ci, le texte m’apparaissait trop important, il fallait que les personnages soient là afin de défendre les mots avec leur corps, les cautionner. Ça rejoint un peu le théâtre et ça en fait un projet hybride qui est difficile à caser…»

Les références à Joyce se situent surtout sur le plan de la forme, les 24 chants qui constituent la pièce étant tous traités de façon différente, comme les chapitres de Ulysses sont tous écrits dans des styles différents. C’est aussi de cette manière que Calon peut faire des allusions à divers compositeurs qui ont marqué l’histoire de la musique concrète. «Je ne cite pas forcément ces compositeurs, précise-t-il, mais des manières de travailler.» Bien sûr, lors du concert, c’est Calon qui sera à la console de mixage pour spatialiser la bande sur l’orchestre de haut-parleurs et procéder au traitement des voix. Les voix en direct seront celles de Gabriel Gascon (Homère), Elisabeth Lenormand (Athéna), Wajdi Mouawad (Ulysse) et de la New-Yorkaise Shelley Hirsch (Pénélope). Cette dernière, véritable pasionaria surréaliste, chantera sa partie en anglais. Les choeurs, ainsi que d’autres personnages, seront sur bande, comme la musique dont une grande partie du matériau de base a été fournie par les guitares acoustique et électrique de René Lussier. Les versions radiophoniques allemande et française du Projet Ulysse devraient bientôt se trouver sur deux disques compacts édités par empreintes DIGITALes.

En avant-programme, le compositeur diffusera Time Well (La Fontaine du temps), une œuvre qu’il a créée à Paris en mai dernier et que Wayne Siegel nous faisait découvrir le 11 septembre dernier lors d’un concert de la série Rien à voir 12. Notez que le Festival Elektra débute le 7 novembre avec une soirée qui présentera une série de premières d’œuvres vidéo-musique de compositeurs montréalais, parmi lesquels Jean Piché, Zack Settel et VJ Pillow.

I’ve been waiting a long time to get the new string of empreintes DIGITALes CD’s, but it’s been worth the wait. Holy smokes. Arturo Parra is the guitarist on this CD of mixed electroacoustics. This is not the mixed (and oh so!) EA you’ve heard at your local university, this is exciting and fervent music by some big names in the EA scene and some lesser ones all working in collaboration with the guitarist Arturo Parra. The first offering, Stéphane Roy’s La basilique fantôme, is one of the most impressive mixes I’ve ever heard. Perfectly superb. The guitar is never hidden, never outdone by the electronics. Roy and Parra create a wonderful symmetry between the ancient baroque origins of the guitar and contemporary EA. Mauricio Bejarano follows with a quieter but equally strong offering in D’or et de lumière. Parra and Bejerano offer some truly breathtaking and serene moments, which I find is always a shocking in EA. The EA legend, Francis Dhomont follows with Sol Y sombra… L’espace des spectres. Signature Dhomont sounds here which I was a bit worried about, but needn’t have been. Temporally, Dhomont has such control of his material. Dhomont is very aggressive with his sounds. Parra’s not afraid of allowing Dhomont’s music to overpower the guitar, and it’s very effective. In Gilles Gobeil’s Soledad Parra uses a lot of percussive guitar sounds and it’s very enjoyable. Huge, loud sweeping textures, reminiscent of the music if Francisco Lopez are juxtaposed with quiet, minimalist sections. Parra’s collaboration with Robert Normandeau in L’envers du temps, is the one weak track on the disc. There’s something about the sound in his work that I’m not as convinced about. Perhaps it’s the emphasis on tonal centres that I couldn’t get into. The press release states that “style wise, this may not be your usual empreintes DIGITALes fair.” Indeed not, and thank heavens for it. I thought the label was in a bit of a funky rut. I see they are not. A great disc.

Stephan Dunkelman is a Belgian, born 1956, who composes for exhibitions (Charlotte Marchal, sculpture; Axel Miret, paintings [also represented with the cover of this issue]; Michèle Noiret, choreographies; Azniv Afsar, fashion design)

Of course the electroacoustic idiom is perfectly suited for these ends, even though this is the first time I’m aware of this art being utilized in the fashion business! However, I know that Swedish electronic music pioneer Ralph Lundsten sold his soul to the weapons industry with a piece to open the presentation ceremony of a new Swedish jet fighter, which eventually was sold to the new regime in South Africa, which one would think would have many domestic problems of poverty and education and fairness to deal with before bailing out all their money to the Swedish weapons sharks… so with that in view I certainly have no objections to this art accompanying the fashion movement, which, nonetheless, harbors sensuality and intuition too, while the weapons’ industry is 100% pure evil… no matter what Swedish double standards might say…

Dunkelman studied with legendary Annette Vande Gorne at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Mons, Belgium.

Stephan Dunkelman really is a “dunkel” man, in the German and Swedish meaning of the word; vague, obscure, mysterious… This became clear to me on spinning track one of Dunkelman’s new CD Rhizomes – Metharcana (1998) — under the bleak light of the laser beam. A beautifully rendered space of emerging spheres of shiny, metallic properties bring you into a state of hovering, of weightless existence in a shadow world between these soaring, tumbling spheres, of which you cannot get hold, ‘cause of their infinitely even surfaces…

Speed is appearing as an entity unto itself through the music, moving rapidly through this beautiful, but dusky and anonymous, extra-human spacescape… where sounds reminiscent of Bayle (Les Couleurs de la Nuit) or Parmegiani (La Création du Monde) artistry are scattered like sonic seeds of Christmas tree bliss… but all in the haze of a dream, a… hallucination… which appears in a world where humans have no say, where humans are not known, where the entities of existence swirl ’round cup grease, screws and bolts and anonymous machinery… and then, at 3:56, a surprise!

When I heard this the first time I was caught off guard, and instantly I was asking myself if I really heard what I thought I heard, or if I actually really was the victim of sonic hallucinations… because out of the speedily moving layers of dreamy, electroacoustic artistry a whisper rose, or rather swirled, round and around my head… and it appeared to me that it all sounded too familiar, until it suddenly dawned on me that the women who whispered spoke Swedish! I was completely unprepared for this on a Canadian CD featuring a Belgian composer, and the way in which the lingual aspect sort of rose hazily out of the rushing flow of sounds made the experience even more spectacular to the non-suspecting reviewer!

The “dunkel” aspect I mentioned initially is even more confirmed as the words and sentences uttered in this whispering female voice are not all clearly recognizable as to their content of meaning, but rather heard like loose thoughts inside someone’s head, registered on some fly-by extraterrestrial device inside one of the luxurious space ships of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy… Even more “dunkel” is Dunkelman’s way of not explaining who this Swedish whispering woman is, and what text she recites. I would like to be filled in on this! (If I am I will insert the information here!) As I look at the information on the sleeve I notice that Metharcana won first prize at the Stockholm Electronic Arts Award in 1998, so in there somewhere is a hidden explanation…

The effect of the voice, even if you can’t understand the language, adds even more of a dreamy, otherworldly or subconscious feel to the mix. Some of the whispers go: “Namnet på han som ritade kläderna” (“The name of the guy who drew the clothes…”, followed by “Jag tycker om att se på…” (“I like to look at…”), “…reklamen…” (…“the commercials…”), “…det gick inte, snart är jag gammal…” (…it didn’t work, soon I’ll be old…”). Ear-shattering (at least if heard through earphones) dark percussive effects pan wildly, hitting your tympanic membranes in a rage, as the whisper continues: “…tog bilder av mig; det var hans bilder, inte mina…” (“…took pictures of me; they were his, not mine…”), “…varje morgon när jag köper tidningen…” (…each morning as I buy the newspaper…”), “…namnet på han som ritade kläderna…” (“…the name of the guy who drew the clothes…”), “…jag tycker om att stå på perrongen…” (“…I like to stand on the platform…”) …and towards the conclusion the woman half whispers, half talks (for the first time), saying, again: “Jag tycker om att stå på perrongen, varje morgon när jag köper tidningen…” (“I like to stand at the platform, each morning as I buy the newspaper”), and the motion and commotion of the music is intense, to say the least.

It impresses me how good Dunkelman is at using a few elements of sound repeatedly, as sounding objects, inside the general haste of the forthwelling sound mass. Dunkelman writes in his introduction that he has used here material originally intended for a choreographic production. This piece should be played loud, like a rock n’ roll piece, so that you’re carried along in the forceful flow, while the whispers cut into your ears. Metharcana is a masterpiece!

The second work on the CD is Rituellipses (1993 – 1996). This is a work composed “by and for dance”, as Dunkelman, in his “dunkel” way puts it… he goes on to describe the piece thus:

The sonic objects, made from fragments of concrete or instrumental musical patterns, are swept along as if by [a] centrifugal force [but this description reminds the reviewer very much of the first piece too]. They follow each other in continuous rotational movements that only silence suspends. These studies of trajectory combinations are developed in short movements that are alternately lively, calm, restrained or uninhibited. […]

Stephan Dunkelman also lets on that he has had two movies in mind while he worked these sound worlds, Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice (shot on the island of Fårö, Sweden) and Night Sun by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. The composer points out that these movies deal with the kind of over-arching relationship that man may have with, say, a tree or a rock, in an atmosphere of reminiscences of lost wisdom, of the oneness.

The panning is formidable in the piece, right from the outset, and if you listen over earphones you will get dizzy! Little sounds are percussed (a new word, I trust!) and thrown about wildly, but in clean-cut audio, revealing much sonic beauty, flashing by, back and forth and all around, in a magic display of spatial playfulness, of a kind refined to a state which I haven’t experienced before under the looking-glass of the laser beam! The sounds that are treated in this way seem to stem from all kinds of concrete sources, like perhaps kitchen ware, pebbles and whatnot – but they are extremely percussed (second time this word has been documented in semantic and etymologic history!) and panned, and enjoyed thoroughly by this listener, this connoisseur of auditory pleasure! Some parts bring in influences from the formidable Frenchman Jean Schwarz (Suite Symphonique & Gamma Plus), but also from American citizen Morton Subotnick (The Key To Songs & Jacob’s Room).

The repetitious patterns that arise lure you into a kind of shamanistic sphere, your eardrums vibrating in brain-tickling cycles, conjuring up visions of annual rings of old oaks and strata of rock, sideways up out of the African soil. In this music Time is a vehicle; a probe in which top soar, down the slopes of thought, of dream – of unintent.

Hanna’ Duet (1998) is, says Dunkelman, “a geometric replica, a simple reproduction of a segment of choreography.” The drumming sweeps by real close, tapping both your temples, while incisive sounds – sharp, edgy — slice through space like samurai swords. Tilting planes dance about in a display of arithmetics, somewhat like the sight of South American ants carrying leaves; ah, yes, it’s a South American ant leaf dance on a branch of a tree in the rain forest! Ant choreography gone electroacoustic in Monsieur Dunkelman’s studio!

Track 4 has a mighty title: Dreamlike Shudder in an Airstream Part 1: for a crumpled woman (2000). Cryptically, in a shroud of “Dunkelheit”, Dunkelman talks about the communion between the real and the unreal, and of possible venues between the two – and this piece deals with it; not a small feat! Initially immediately overpowered by a whole room of grouchy furniture falling over me I proceed cautiously through this incarnate philosophy, expressed in sound waves of utter beauty and edge. An armada of upset doorways clashes in a wooden pile just outside my ears. Intense rubbery and wooden friction mix with the squeaking of grumpy hinges cutting loose of angered door cases, while a cloud of grasshopper legs fall down as black, thin-lined precipitation from some perversion of cruelty to animals above, in some outcast dimension bordering ours in the uncertainty of quantum mechanics… Then screws and bolts that sweep past move so densely and so fast that all that remains is an acrid smell of speedy metal and a hovering trace of metal dust.

Sounds reaching out like distant, trapped human screams of horror seep out through a tormented mass of mangled iron bar sounds, but at times I think I hear the sounds of feet across the floor of a gym! The speed is – as in many of Dunkelman’s works – enormous, and there is no way you can keep up, but enjoyment is guaranteed! He has poured all and everything into his sound machines, but the result is perfectly balanced anyhow, in the grand scope of things. The conclusion of this piece is even a bit melancholy, stretching a thin line of distant strings across and beyond the sonic horizon…

Aquaéra 1 (1996) was Dunkelman’s first attempt to work with sounds sampled from the so-called real world. It’s a successful attempt, I do say, with many sounds that are readily identified as fenders squeezed between a boat and the quay, crows, distant light houses in the fog etcetera – but brilliantly woven into the commotion of sound flurries… because the typical Dunkelman spatiality is present already in this piece. The feeling is a bit desolate, lonely, forlorn… and very, very beautiful.

Signallures (1991) is Dunkelman’s earliest work on this CD. He has equipped the piece with a few imperatives, not so unlike Stockhausen’s performance instructions for Aus den sieben Tagen:

Discover all that trembles sin you. Ridicule all that eludes you. Leap, knowing you’ll fail. Come alive to yourself less cold.

The composer says he’s worked this piece with rubbing and striking and using the width and depth of the sound space to distribute the sounds. To begin with this work is more sparsely populated – sounded! – than the others before it. There is more space, more air, maybe, between the sonic objects, which appear and disappear like fragments, flakes of matter in a cold wind. It appears Dunkelman has used a zither or some other stringed instrument for some of the quirky, springy events. Already in this early piece the spatiality is important to Dunkelman, and very nicely executed as the sonic fragments, which sometimes are extended to sonic progressions, rise and sink, move away and come close. Perhaps it’s a harp that Dunkelman uses in a good part of the piece. As I travel further along the evolution of the piece is starts reminding me of works by Horacio Vaggione. This is a very nice piece of electroacoustics, a bit pointillistic, but the really amazing works in the Dunkelman oeuvre are to be found in his later output.

The last entry is Thru, Above and Between (1998), which is Dunkelman’s first work for radio. The composer says he has regarded the city (the sponsor’s subject matter for the piece) – here Brussels – as an imploding dream. Indeed there is an inward feeling to the sounds rising out of the sound magician’s hat. Rain and distant foghorns are swept in a shroud of timbrally shifting electronic drones, a whirlwind turning into a worldwind, and mighty halls or pathways or gallerias open up, wherein the simmering, shimmering sound of the crowd twinkles and glares, like a flood wave of humanity behind the walls of concrete and marble and glass. This music is like present day city life bending in on itself in a metropolic introspection and self-contemplation, in poetic arithmetics of sound waves, carrying the happy sounds of children as well as the forlorn thoughts of old-timers on the park benches, with souls like leaves swept away by the wind of fall…

Stephan Dunkelman’s electroacoustic sound world is one of the most interesting places I’ve been in contemporary art music. It’s been a true pleasure to venture through this rewarding sonic artistry.