electrocd

Seuil de silences [Threshold of Silences]

Paul Dolden

Paul Dolden is one of the most innovative artists out there right now. Avant Music News

Aux atmosphères très prenantes s’ajoutent de larges citations musicales, dans une orgie de références très ludiques. SOCAN, Paroles & Musique, Canada

Prix Opus 2003-04: Disque de l’année

3 works for fixed medium (tape) from 1987-1989 entirely remastered + 2 new mixed works.

  • Canada Council for the Arts • SODEC

CD (IMED 0369)

  • Label: empreintes DIGITALes
  • IMED 0369
  • 2003
  • UCC 771028036929
  • Total duration: 74:06
  • OGpak
  • 125 mm × 125 mm × 10 mm
  • 50 g

On the web

Notices

Why Remaster Old Works? (Seuil de silences)

In the late 1970’s I started to write and produce music involving hundreds of parts or tracks. In the early days, the analogue recording medium was very noisy when bouncing (or premixing) tracks together. Things improved throughout the 1980’s and ’90’s, but a large multitrack digital tape recorder was still out of my financial reach. By the late 1990’s the new computer and hard drive speeds finally provided me with an affordable multitrack solution. For the first time in my life I was able to achieve the balance between individual voices that I had so carefully notated in the original scores. I achieved further musical clarity and a new depth of sound by using quality compression, equalisation and reverb. To remaster, I went back to the individual tracks. This was a huge undertaking. For example, a piece like Below the Walls of Jericho (1988-89) may be only 14 minutes and 30 seconds long, but it is a large tape work comprising eighty hours of original recorded materials.

Recordings always ‘freeze’ or crystallise musical and spectral meaning for the listener. An odd sound combination that you have grown fond of in the old master may not appear in the same way in the new one. However, I think you will agree that I have stayed true to the original compositions. I resisted changing any of my original compositional decisions on the three tape works originally released on the 1990 CD The Threshold of Deafening Silence (Tronia, TRD 0190).

I invite you to discover many new levels of meaning and clarity in the new masters, which are much closer to my original artistic intention.

[x-03]

Introduction

The creation of the solo tape compositions involves the composition of several hundred simultaneous musical parts or lines on large manuscript paper. Each part or line is individually performed on an acoustic instrument and recorded. Once all several hundred parts have been individually recorded, they are digitally mixed together with usually no, or very little, signal processing or electronic effects. This working method allows for new and complex polyrhythmic and microtonal tuning relationships between parts that could never be performed by a live ensemble. This compositional technique also allows for unique orchestration and density possibilities that can be constantly transformed.


In creating these works for soloist(s) and tape, many details of the tape become masked by the soloist’s sound. However, by being able to clearly hear one part, one gains a new perspective on my sound world, as the solo line often highlights fairly hidden musical gestures and directions. Moreover, one has the wonderful contrast between the tape, in which hundreds of musical parts often create anonymous massed textural effects, and hearing the soloist(s) with all their subjectivity, subtlety and detail they bring.

[x-03]

Some recommended items
In the press

AMN Review

Mike Eisenberg, Avant Music News, January 17, 2021

Since there has been a considerable stylistic and compositional shift in Paul Dolden’s music between this, his first album for empreintes DIGITALes and the last one I reviewed, (Histoires d’histoire), I would like to explore this release and possibly / hopefully give some insight as to how his sound evolved. Seuil de silences has a bit of a tangled history. The genesis of this release was in 1990 with The Threshold of Deafening Silence on the now defunct Tronia label. I wasn’t aware of it at the time but listening to it now, three decades on I can say that what he was doing was fairly groundbreaking, if not, downright extreme for it’s time. I would even go as far as to say, our world hasn’t caught up to these four pieces yet.

Using 1990 tape technology, Dolden was able to achieve a sound that was sonically massive AND compositionally advanced for what was generally considered “ambient” music back then. In fact, if you (mistakenly) dropped him into that category you would have been discounting his musical and technical skills. I’m not on a mission to belittle in any way the fine talents of musicians like Steve Roach or Robert Rich but clearly, this release finds Dolden walking a very different sonic pathway. There were some similarities, possibly his use of untuned and tuned percussion presented at times a sort of ritualistic/tribal feel to the music that was popping up at the time. His technique of recording hundreds of tracks of acoustic instruments and then layering them on top of each other enabling him to explore different (micro) tonalities and timbres within the “note” did not share any similarities though, and this is what I think separated him from the Ambient crowd and placed him squarely within the Acousmatic zone.

In 2003, empreintes DIGITALes released Seuil de silences (Threshold of Silences). This release shared 3 of the tape compositions from Threshold of Deafening Silence plus two more compositions featuring live soloists and tape. The shared tracks were remastered by Dolden using up to date, state of the art studio gear. There are some major aural differences in this release compared to the 1990 predecessor. Seuil de silences has a much larger bass presence. Thankfully, this does not muddy up the sound and, in fact, adds even more drama and power to the compositions, something that I didn’t think was possible. It also seems to be generally louder and more “in your face” than the 1990 version. Again, given the fact that these pieces display an absurd amount of power and intensity to begin with, adding more loudness may sound like overkill to some, although I’m not one who thinks this is so. Finally, there were some musical content changes made that resulted in changing the times of the pieces by a small amount. Since I haven’t A-B’ed these versions on a granular level, I can’t really speak to these changes but, I believe they are minor… realizing the composer may think differently.

About the album, right out of the gate we have Below the Walls of Jericho. This is part one of a “Jericho” triptych that continues with his next 2 albums, Intoxicated by Speed 1 and 2. I can’t stress enough how searingly intense this piece gets in places. Realizing that Acousmatic music is meant for the listener to interpret in their own personal way without concerning (and distracting) themselves with such trivial things as sound sources or the “how” of creating the music… one can’t help but wonder “how” exactly did Dolden come up with this malevolent entity of sound? Instead of wasting space talking about process, if interested you can read liner notes and other commentary by the composer here.

There are aspects that stand out for me though. His controlled use of dynamics is unparalleled. There are parts throughout that can easily lull you into a serene state of catatonia only to be bludgeoned back into the real suddenly and without warning. Contrastingly, there are moments where you can see it coming. You can hear and feel the build and you know you are about to experience a wheezing, screaming, utterly menacing harpy encounter and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Then there is his penchant for ending a phrase in a very dry manner. Let me try and explain this… you are reaching the tail end of a passage that is constructed with up to 400 tracks of wind, reed, string, choir, and metal percussive instruments. The passage ends suddenly and without warning. The ending is not a hard cut as if you are turning off a light switch but it’s an ending where the instruments themselves just simply stop playing. It all sounds very natural and you can even hear residual noises of the musicians lifting their fingers from their instruments or the fading ring of struck metal decaying into the ether. The effect is riveting, and it’s something that really needs to be heard rather than described with puny words.

Everything about this recording seems up close and personal as if you were living inside the sound. Remember the movie Fantastic Voyage from the 60’s? It’s like that… you know!

My personal experience with this music is, first and foremost trying to wrap my head around the sheer immensity of the sound stage. Sometimes I’ll spend the length of an entire album of Dolden music just marveling at its vastness. If I do happen to get past this stage, the body aspect kicks in. I begin to feel it, in all its bone-shaking splendor. Everything I’ve mentioned is part of the physical world but if you are able to peel back the onion layer and start to experience it on a cerebral level, well that’s when the game really begins.

Paul Dolden is one of the most innovative artists out there right now. He has actually done a second remaster which he is posting to his Bandcamp page. Among other released and unreleased pieces, he has made available the piece Below the Walls of Jericho with this new remaster. He considers these the definitive versions of his works. The fact that he’s under the radar is criminal. Have a listen, see for yourselves.

A final word, as in all Acousmatic music, a good sound system will enhance your experience by orders of magnitude. My preferred way of listening is through decent earbuds augmented with a DAC/headphone amp. A YouTube video through computer speakers is not optimal so, if you can, try and listen on a good system of your choice.

Paul Dolden is one of the most innovative artists out there right now.

Paul Dolden: le plaisir du son

Guy Marceau, SOCAN, Paroles & Musique, no. 12:2, June 1, 2005

Une équation se dessine d’emblée lorsqu’on écoute L’ivresse de la vitesse (1992), une des œuvres de Paul Dolden qui a fait l’unanimité des milieux musicaux contemporains ici et en Europe, et qu’on écoute le volubile compositeur parler de son art. À bientôt 50 ans, avec une propension à l’excès, l’accélération et l’accumulation des plans sonores, Paul Dolden parle aussi vite que la musique qu’il compose, mais ralentit un peu lorsqu’il clame ne pas être un vrai électroacousticien. Comment le situer?

Paul Dolden, né à Vancouver mais vivant à Montréal, a tout du compositeur atypique mais passionné de musique. Très easy going, cheveux longs, relent du freak qu’il était dans les années 70, attitude un peu désinvolte et joyeusement pince-sans-rire, il est surtout très allumé et non élitiste. «Même si on compose la musique à l’aide de machines électroniques et numériques, il faut toujours rester dans le plaisir organique, de la même manière qu’on écoute simplement Led Zeppelin ou Brahms par exemple, explique Paul Dolden. Je ne suis pas un électroacousticien au sens de Robert Normandeau, par exemple, notre travail est très différent. J’aime notamment intégrer à ma musique des instruments acoustiques et des emprunts au rock ou au jazz, des styles que j’ai toujours eu beaucoup de plaisir à écouter. Ma musique parle plus au corps et au cœur qu’à la tête.»

Dolden fait mentir l’adage Less is more. Il excelle dans la surimpression de styles musicaux disparates, «pas pour en faire de bêtes pastiches, précise-t-il, mais bien pour exploiter les grandes beautés de ces musiques dans une orchestration imposante que la machine me permet de réaliser et qu’aucun orchestre ne pourrait jouer. Dans mes œuvres, je peux superposer jusqu’à 400 couches musicales pour créer mes sonorités…» À l’écoute, en effet, sa musique parle à tous nos sens: puissante, obsédante et parfois décadente, toujours hautement chargée et recherchée. Il combine ce souci de l’ordre dans le désordre, l’idée de vitesse dans le contrôle, en exploitant les textures, ryrthmes et sonorités sur l’échelle élastique du temps au profit d’une plasticité des plus incarnées. On pense parfois à Varèse ou Zappa, mais toujours dans un «traitement électronique sensible».

Autodidacte

Rockeur dans l’âme, Paul Dolden apprend à 16 ans la guitare électrique, puis le violon et la basse en solo. Il s’est même récemment mis au violoncelle! Las de faire de la scène (rock, jazz) dans des spectacles et avec des groupes à géométrie variable de Vancouver, il se lance dans l’expérimentation électronique au joyeux temps de la technologie analogique. «La nécessité est la mère de toutes les inventions. En cherchant de nouvelles façons de faire ma musique, j’ai découvert toute la quincaillerie électronique des années 70. C’est fou ce qu’on peut faire avec ça! Mais, tout comme maintenant, la machine était un moyen, pas une fin en soi.» Ses bidouillages créatifs font mouche au Canada: dès 1981, Paul Dolden remporte des premiers prix coup sur coup. «Avec ces prix, on me disait entre les lignes que la musique que je composais était ce qui se faisait de mieux au Canada! Alors j’ai continué, pensez-donc!»

Et des prix, il y en aura plus d’une vingtaine d’autres. Presque chaque année, une de ses œuvres reçoit une récompense par ses pairs de l’industrie musicale contemporaine et électroacoustique canadienne. La bonne nouvelle se répand ensuite hors de nos frontières et dès 1984, ses œuvres sont primées en Italie, France, États-Unis, République Tchèque, Suède, Angleterre… Un pied de nez à certains autres compositeurs canadiens, puisqu’il n’a pas le profil académique universitaire requis, mais bien seulement un baccalauréat en histoire générale…

Revisiter ses œuvres

Pour qui voudrait entendre le fruit de sa créativité, l’essentiel de ses enregistrernents figure chez empreintes DIGITALes. Son avant-dernier, Seuil de silences (2003), remportait en janvier dernier le Prix Opus du disque de l’année dans la catégorie Musique actuelle, électroacoustique. L’album réunit des œuvres de 1987 à 1996 où, à la trame numérique, s’ajoute le jeu de trois solistes, Julie-Anne Derome (violon), François Houle (clarinette) et Leslie Wyber (piano). «Il faut savoir qu’avec la venue du numérique, j’ai décidé de remixer toutes mes œuvres… Compte tenu que pour réussir à produire une pièce de 15 minutes, il me faut souvent plus de 50 heures de travail, j’en ai eu au total pour un pou plus de deux ans!» Paul Dolden dit avoir fait ce travail pour rendre justice aux œuvres elles-mêmes, qui devenaient ainsi plus précises, plus efficaces et plus sonores.

Rétrospective en Suède

Après plus de 20 ans de carrière, et quelque 40 œuvres plus tard, la reconnaissance ne s’est pas démentie. À la fin avril, Paul Dolden était l’artiste invité au Borderlines Festival en Suède où l’on présentait une rétrospective de ses œuvres (12 pièces, dont deux créations, en neuf jours). Et l’affiche était prestigieuse: aux côtés de ses œuvres, 12 signées Gyorgy Ligeti, un des importants compositeurs du 20e siècle, Ligeti et Dolden partagent certaines approches et techniques d’écriture, notamment dans la complexité polyrythmique. Dolden était en quelque sorte le porte-parole canadien d’une facette de notre paysage musical contemporain électroacoustique, ce qui visiblement l’enchante. Un projet en chantier? «Toujours! Je travaille présentement sur une installation sonore à grande échelle qui se tiendra l’an prochain pendant un mois à la Galerie Diapason de Manhattan (New York).»

Avril a vu la parution de son dernier disque, Délires de plaisirs, regroupant des œuvres remixées dont Entropic Twilights (1997-2002) pour bande en trois mouvements, The Gravity of Silence. Resonance #5 (1996) pour flûte et bande, et The Heart Tears itself Apart with the Power of its own Muscle. Resonance #3 (1995) pour 10 cordes et bande. Aux atmosphères très prenantes s’ajoutent de larges citations musicales, dans une orgie de références très ludiques. La musique force l’écoute et ne laisse pas indifférent. On peut en écouter des extraits sur le site d’empreintes DIGITALes au www.empreintesdigitales.com.

Aux atmosphères très prenantes s’ajoutent de larges citations musicales, dans une orgie de références très ludiques.

Territorial Imperatives: Canada’s boldest and brightest labels…

Tobias C van Veen, e/i magazine, no. 4, June 1, 2005

[…] The minimum one can say of empreintes DIGITALes is that it is a prolific label for electroacoustic music as well as provocative experiments in conceptual sound. A few recent releases graft the varied interests of academic and acousmatic music together via the intriguing work of, say, John Oswald. His Aparanthesi is the work of a single note that is gradually inflected along its pitch and combined with various tuned field recordings. [aparanthesi A] is an A note tuned to 440 Hz, which is the broadcast signal stations play when off-air. [aparanthesi B] is a compressed stereo image of the 8 channel performance created for 2000’s Rien à voir electroacoustic festival in Montréal. It is tuned to 480 Hz, the North American electrical standard, so it is in-tune with the hum of lighting and electrical grids. It is also a sonic impression of a complex and involved performance that uprooted the audience from the seats to the atrium and back again. We might call the album a conceptual play between electroacoustc and microsound, audience and chair, sitting and standing, tuning and silence, and for these reasons, the listening experience is very unlike the genre’s contemporaries. Roxanne Turcotte, for example, produces a melange of disjunctive sound, voice and phone recordings, environmental atmospheres and world beat rhythms on Libellune, which features work dating back to 1985. Its complexity at times is interesting, for as a survey of her œuvre it mirrors the development of Montréal electroacoustic in its infatuation with voice and, like R Murray Schafer, the natural world. That said, it remains well within the by now well-established parameters of academic composition. Paul Dolden’s work trammels from New Music composition to electroacoustic, employing repetiton and choral arrangements in a fashion not unlike that of Philip Glass, albeit with a drive toward melodrama and punch over satyagraha, throwing in all elements including the kitchen throughout L’ivresse de la vitesse 1 and 2. Like Turcotte, this work too spans from the ‘80s to the ‘90s, and so much of its feel is like listening to a beloved but aging record from that era, its metallic drums and neon wildness only appearing just a tad navel-gazing with age. Dolden is somewhat overwhelming; [L’ivresse de la vitesse] is a nightmare collage at its start that quickly gets into squeaky territory. For this, the remedy of Seuil de silences is welcome. Although from the same era, its breathing space offers more time for reflection, arrangement and thought, even if the disharmonius creeps back into the picture and becomes an ultimate ode to piano-bashing. […]

… a prolific label for electroacoustic music as well as provocative experiments in conceptual sound.

Review

Grant Chu Covell, La Folia, March 1, 2005

Lucky Dolden, for having time and opportunity to remaster old ea compositions with digital technology. While these pieces aren’t exactly prehistoric, 1990’s analogue assembly and track-bouncing fogged the clarity of Dolden’s style: He notates a passage for 100 or more acoustic instruments, records each part individually, then mixes them in the studio. Today’s tools make his restless works shine and vibrate. His rapid pace would stun a defibrillator.

The most representative piece here, Caught in an Octagon of Unaccustomed Light, aligns nonstandard tuning with the burr and hum of struck metal, possibly prepared piano and cymbals. Is the heaving material in a kaleidoscope or meat grinder? I imagine the different threads marshalling themselves like eager, acquiescent robots, only to scatter suddenly into dust: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice meets Metropolis. Disjointed episodes serendipitously linked, Below the Walls of Jericho isn’t a Biblical illustration. Dolden fancies the idea that sound could bring down a wall and his piece could do just that. In the Natural Doorway I Crouch pulses with plucked strings and wind instruments.

Dolden happily joins his tapes with live instruments. Gravity’s Stillness. Resonance #6 features solo violin (Julie-Anne Derome) and The Vertigo of Ritualized Frenzy. Resonance #4 has parts for clarinet (François Houle) and piano (Leslie Wyber). The live musicians occasionally succumb to the blitz or else are instantly echoed and multiplied. In The Vertigo of Ritualized Frenzy. Resonance #4, the duo labors mostly in unison on a increasingly numbing modal phrase while the entire world swirls ’round. Gravity’s Stillness. Resonance #6 starts with uncharacteristically delicate washes under the violin, but soon erupts into business as usual.

Seuil de silences’ companions are L’ivresse de la vitesse 1 and L’ivresse de la vitesse 2, two wonderfully titled discs with remastered pieces — actually Dolden’s third time through them. Several interconnected series straddle the three discs, some for tape alone, others requiring instruments to duel alongside. Try any.

Today’s tools make his restless works shine and vibrate. His rapid pace would stun a defibrillator.

Gala des prix Opus 2004

Réjean Beaucage, La Scena Musicale, no. 10:6, March 1, 2005

[…] La musique électroacoustique est également sortie du gala la tête haute, mais ne s’est pas pour autant privée de montrer les dents! En effet, le compositeur Robert Normandeau a utilisé une bonne partie du mot de remerciement qu’il prononçait pour Luigi Ceccarelli, récipiendaire du prix du «concert de l’année - musiques actuelle, électroacoustique», donné dans le cadre de la série Rien à voir (14), organisée par Réseaux, pour apostropher le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec et le nouvel Espace musique de Radio-Canada. Les deux organismes seraient en effet coupables de laisser à eux-mêmes les artistes ayant choisi de s’exprimer par l’électroacoustique, un art dont le Québec est certes l’un des meilleurs représentants à l’échelle mondiale, Normandeau faisant lui-même figure de chef de file dans le domaine. Le «disque de l’année - musiques actuelle, électroacoustique» est allé à Seuil de silences, de Paul Dolden, publié chez empreintes DIGITALes, et le «livre de l’année» est celui de Stéphane Roy, L’analyse des musiques électroacoustiques; Modèles et propositions, publié dans la collection Univers musical chez Harmattan.

La musique électroacoustique est également sortie du gala la tête haute…

Review

Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes, June 27, 2004

One of the most talented acousmatic composers on today’s scene, Canadian Paul Dolden shows his assembling skills in this collection of new and reworked pieces where hundreds of tracks are painstakingly crafted to form castles of imposingly powerful modulations, droning substrata of nuclear fissions and strange concoctions of melody and soundquaking strokes. Dolden pulls all his strings with almost maniacal attention to the completion of every movement until its full development, thereby coasting the shores of contemporary computer music while mixing the whole with bits of irony a la Zappa/Synclavier era, only with a little more redundance - which is probably what the author wanted in the first place. Imaginary giant orchestras are thus able to shake buildings and ears - yet the best moments are the ones where slow spirals of oblique undertows cut a slice of perfection off the picture, bringing that necessary sense of undistinguishable anxiety that’s the moving force of the record.

… hundreds of tracks are painstakingly crafted to form castles of imposingly powerful modulations…

Review

Ingvar Loco Nordin, Sonoloco Record Reviews, December 15, 2003

Paul Dolden and empreintes DIGITALes throw three new Dolden CDs at us simultaneously, in an unparalleled marketing of one single composer’s work. However, it’s not as strange as it may sound, but really quite an interesting and rewarding venture, because it has to do with reissues of old material, remastered by the composer with modern equipment. Dolden is one of the most prolific electroacousticians, and for sure his oeuvre deserves to be revisited, especially after its recent technical and artistic brush-up.

Paul Dolden explains: “In the late 1970s I started to write and produce music involving hundreds of parts or tracks. In the early days the analogue recording medium was very noisy when bouncing (or premixing) tracks together. Things improved throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but a large multitrack digital tape recorder was still out of my financial reach. By the late 1990s the new computer and hard drive speeds finally provided me with an affordable multitrack solution. For the first time in my life I was able to achieve the balance between individual voices that I had so carefully notated in the original scores. I achieved further musical clarity and a new depth of sound by using quality compression, equalization and reverb. To remaster, I went back to the individual tracks. This was a huge undertaking. For example, a piece like Dancing on the Walls of Jericho may be only 16 minutes and 15 seconds long, but it is a large tape work comprising eighty hours of original recorded materials. Recordings always freeze or crystallize musical and spectral meaning for the listener. An odd sound combination that you have grown fond of in the old master may not appear in the same way in the new one. However, I think you will agree that I have stayed true to the original compositions. I changed some musical moments and transitions in Dancing on the Walls of Jericho, and the tape components for Physics of Seduction. Invocation #2 and Physics of Seduction. Invocation #3, all originally released on the L’ivresse de la vitesse CD in 1994. These changes were motivated by compositional concerns and were created using the musical materials from the Walls Cycle. The only new recordings made for the remastering process were the drum parts (performed by Philippe Keyser) in Physics of Seduction. Invocation #2 and Physics of Seduction. Invocation #3.

I invite you to discover my new levels of meaning and clarity in the new masters, which are much closer to my original artistic intention.”

L’ivresse de la vitesse 1

L’ivresse de la vitesse (Intoxication by Speed) (1992-93).

Dolden: “The title […] is an allusion towards my current artistic intentions which involve the speeding up of an excess of musical ideas so that the composition and its materials exhaust themselves in the shortest time possible. The intoxicating aspect of speed is evoked by using primarily fast tempo markings and rapid changes in orchestration, density and dynamics. These elements can be particularly sped up to the point of exhaustion and intoxication in the digital audio studio which is limitless or virtual in its color and density possibilities.”

There is no mercy administered, and no time to adapt; you’re in the surging midst of sound the second it commences. However, the rush of grainy properties very soon take on more familiar guises, as male and female choirs rise, in a strictly vocal kind of soaring surge, gushing forth like mountain rapids below the glaciers. Sure this is intoxication by speed, secularly perhaps a shoot down the rapids, but in a shaman way perhaps a transposed inner journey of the Bardos… A creaking violin - bow pressing hard on the strings - open up a closed room of whispers, eventually pulling threads and shreds of surrounding reality along in marked pushes and layers of audio, snow-balling, mud-sliding into an immense might, eventually sneaking up on a hasty march of sorts, comically and quire remarkably, all behind a curtain of a certain unreality… There are, however, short retreats of church-like bliss here and there, before the blushing hell of over-intensified motion again grabs you by the neck and throws you downtime, as age and matter are subsequented…

Physics of Seduction. Invocation #3 (1992) for cello and tape; Peggy Lee [cello].

Dolden: “By using an extreme amount of ordinary musical sounds and gestures, their reality becomes more real than real. In other words, the sounds escape the networks of meaning and association, which have built up the reality of our world. This compositional strategy, involving an escalation to extremes, means that the materials themselves disappear as they implode inward and take on new appearances. The realm of seduction involves the strategies of appearances. As a contemporary composer, all that I can hope for is that I have provided the physics, or the interaction of motion and energy, for your own seduction.”

This long work opens in an industrial scenery; at least this is the initial impression: steelworks or shipyard - but soon, very soon, the cello comes to the fore or semi-fore, out of a layer of thick and dense material where it seems caught and predestined to a captive state of existence, albeit sometimes really in front of the wobbling, dancing, heavy backdrop. I’m talking about the first couple of minutes. The cello sets out on strutting, daring escape routes in and out of the seaweed density of sounds, and I imagine someone’s arms feeling their way through the dense and the dark, a grainy and not completely wholesome kind of predicament. Dolden has taken all he’s got and filled up life to its hypothetical rim. The cello saws frantically at some aspects of reality, like an insect inside a jar, desperately trying something impossible, as burning thoughts come up for air and light up matter from inside like electric impulses flaring through cerebral cortexes… Slow, meditative solo parts are offered the cello, as the barnstorming audio completely disappears below and behind. The cello talks like a candle in a nocturnal forest, or like a thought roaming a closed-down mind; a Moomin Troll waking in the middle of Finnish winter, rising prematurely out of hibernation to roam the snowy pastures, discovering unknown properties of existence.

Revenge of the Repressed. Resonance #2 (1993) for soprano sax and tape; François Houle [soprano sax]

Dolden: “As the end of the second millennium approaches [remember, these remarks were written for the original release], we increasingly deal with the angry fallout from our historical legacy. Society turns into a constant search for what has been repressed and denied and we search for some form of revenge for our victimization. However, given that our lives have basically become an extension of the mediascape, and real power lies elsewhere, we become trapped in an endless life-sized Nintendo game seeking justice and revenge.”

A jazzy, feverish jinglish kind of beginning moves through the Coltrane-scape of late day paraphernalia, surprisingly slowing down into mild brass sections in a golden hue - only to pick up speed and frantics again, leaving you… breathless and thoughtless, screwing those saxophones right down into the rock bottom, for what it’s worth… I have no idea how Dolden’s words above correspond to these sounds, mind you… but the show goes on, with or without whatever one is with or without… In here Dolden even manages to sound like Dutch hey-day desperado Louis Andriessen in Dee Staat, punching those semi-jazzy stanzas at you, like sleet blowing in your face on your way to colon x-ray…

Dancing on the Walls of Jericho (1990).

Dolden: Dancing on the Walls of Jericho is the second of a three-part composition, which philosophically addresses the idea of revolution. Part two continues from where part one, Below the Walls of Jericho, had ended. Part one acted as a metaphor for the idea of social change through revolution. Therefore part one was primarily concerned with the vertical monolith and its tearing down by the anonymous massed texture of four hundred tracks of sound. By contrast, part two celebrates this tearing down with a constant polyrhythmic dance on the rubble and the use of extroverted solistic gestures.”

Polishing sounds wipe the curving walls of a contrast medium drenched tunnel, which eventually is filling up with a torrent of audio from the treacherous ill will of the toppling-over sonic ingenuity of Mr. Dolden. This boy certainly wants to invade all your senses and completely take them over. He needs your FULL attention, and if he doesn’t get it right away, he just stuffs you like a fat duck and leaves you sleepless. Much to my surprise, though, the frenzy cools off here, into a gamelan-like limp through the tunnel, and is it the tunnel that near-death experiencers experience on their near-death sojourns, or is it just a leaking realm of boring through the mount, to have you pass ten minutes faster on the train for a sum of 10 billion dollars? No idea! There isn’t much time to contemplate suicide, though, since I get caught up in more sturdy, bouncing limping down the path Dolden doodles, and I fill a spacious glass with much white German wine (Zeller Schwarze Katz) from a bottle presented to me earlier today from a farmer friend in the rain who flies to Germany regularly on Ryanair, and I let things and desperations be the way they please; no shooting out of the anatomy tonight! There is no real hard sense in trying to categorize Dolden’s music; it’s futile, pointless - but I’m filling my quota anyway, and I can throw in words about the enjoyment of living inside this music, ’cause that’s what it’s about; not listening but living. The constellations stomp like horses in their boxes, like Tomas Tranströmer said (or something like it); “thoughts gather in scattered herds through the shadows, the night sky is cold and star sharp; Death laughs inwardly across the wooded horizon…”

Physics of Seduction. Invocation #2 (1991) for harpsichord and tape; Vivienne Spiteri [harpsichord].

Dolden: “Speed creates pure objects. It is itself a pure object, since it cancels out the ground and territorial reference points, since it runs ahead of time to annual time itself, since it moves more quickly than its own cause and obliterates that cause by outstripping it. Speed is the triumph of effect over cause, the triumph of instantaneity over time and depth, the triumph of the surface and pure objectality over the profundity of desire. Speed creates a space of initiation which may be lethal; its only rule is to leave no trace behind. Triumph of forgetting over memory, an uncultivated amnesic intoxication”.

It gets worse, worse… It gets worse… as jittering atoms gather for a mingling vernissage evening at the horizon of events, right around that black hole in the midst of all our lives, or in a laid-back agony at the Restaurant at The End of the Universe (I bow to Mr. Adams who gave some meaning to my meaninglessness). Dolden produces full-blown, full-fledged assumptions of the totality of life and universe, and batters the humpty-dumpty, forlorn jesters of doubt, in a massive grandeur of psychic wonders, out of which a stellar harpsichord rises, glowing like sought-for venom though our arteries… I think of Elisabeth Chojnacka and I think about Jukka Tiensuu - and I leave it to you to figure that one out! Ah, Mr. Dolden! We tremble at these auditory messages from the core of emotional might, from the center of intellectual attention, from the venomous pit of the essence of pain of this existence…

L’ivresse de la vitesse 2

Beyond the Walls of Jericho (1991 - 1992).

Dolden: “The acceleration of our culture in terms of images and ideas creates a point at which everything seems to be happening at once and the maintenance of a linear historical perspective, with its revolutionary eruptions, is no longer meaningful. This simultaneity is musically alluded to several times in the composition by the use of several hundred solos occurring at once. Each solo has its own narrative and history but when all of them are combined together such narrative structures dissolve into one large sound field, often without clear beginning or ending. This breakdown of a linear time perspective and the resulting loss of our musical and social subjectivity create a feeling of absence and a perception of stasis. It is at that moment of æsthetic perception in which our day-to-day realities dissolve and there is a suspension of linear time that the possibility of new thought or feeling, revolutionary or otherwise, can begin.”

Again, as in the preceding re-issue, there is no mercy at all. Dolden starts full speed. A little while later some transparency is administered as the tour-de-force of the beginning suddenly halts, allowing for sounds to be deciphered in gluey, jingling jangling elasticity, peculiarly merging with some of my memories of François Bayle issues of earlier years, visions of an old horse carriage creaking and squeaking through… Hungary, maybe. The sound torrent returns, though, albeit in slower motion and bigger halls, gesturing around the spacious indoors of men with power, eventually falling back into the focused concentration of a hole in the ground in Tikrit… Other instances of this piece are almost comical, which I believe also is the intent of Dolden, in semi-jazzy grimaces, stepping up the tempo in limping rhythms and pearly, watery guitarisms - and I like these parts that pull in different directions, moving a bit out of phase, causing tremendous torque to manifest, threatening to crack the whole situation into bits and pieces of opposing forces, yet flowing out of the loudspeakers on the same strand of auditory law.

In a Bed Where the Moon Was Sweating. Resonance #1 (1993) for clarinet & tape; François Houle [clarinet].

Dolden: “Part of the Resonance Cycle plays with the notion of intimacy in music. In this case the soloist is often surrounded with his own sound, creating a dissolving of the singular with the “other”, which is in fact the performer reflected back in a narcissistic fashion. Beyond these elements, the Resonance Cycle also uses voice, which is perhaps the most intimate and seductive sound of all because it represents the body covered with appearances, illusions, traps, animal parodies and sacrificial simulations.”

Slowly, carefully, softly emerging, very different from the other piece before it, unraveling a smooth, romantic painting motion in the clarinet, distant and closer and close! However, density grows thicker, as a hail of sounds pulls up like a battalion of jeeps with their headlights all on, blinding, encircling, the smelling fumes from the exhaust rising like smoke in the darkness beyond. In this center of attention a space is protected by some invisible power, making a solo dance possible and necessary, and someone plays, dances, around and around, stomping feet in the soil, in the holy hour of cow dust. The clarinet cuts like smooth swords through the fragrance of night. Stockhausenesque voices hammer their morphemes like a palisade around the music, the jeeps still shining their headlights into the middle of the circle. Whispers - also Stockhausenesque - invoke the secrets of the night to perform their unknowns, and the rite probably reaches some kind of completion as the clarinet and the voices and the extraneous sounds merge in a controlled wilderness of sonic attributes.

Physics of Seduction. Invocation #1 (1991) for electric guitar & tape; Paul Dolden [electric guitar].

Dolden: “All great systems of production and interpretation, including musical discourses, increasingly appear as a large futile body. A universe that can no longer be interpreted in the terms of psychological relations, or in structures of oppositions, must be interpreted in the terms of play, challenges, duels, and the strategy of appearances - that is in terms of seduction. Moreover, seduction threatens all orthodoxies with their collapse as it is a black magic for the deviation of all truths.”

Relaxed hands seem to be waving through these laid-back suburban communities, but just for a while, because the midday rescue vehicles soon dash through layer after layer of red-hot guitarisms, cauterizing by-standers and storeowners down the block. A stew is brewing somewheres, bubbling with venom; guitars and screeching unidentifiables. Yes, it is hard as ever to put futile words to Dolden’s messages. They’re tough enough to hear, let alone talk about in an intelligible way. Take it for what its worth - and that goes for the music too. At times I think it’s just boring in all its frenzy, and I close down Mr. Dolden and bring on some Bach Cello Suites or let Mr. Dylan persuade me that It’s Not Dark Yet - but revisiting Dolden brings home some more discoveries from inside the maddening masses, and there are several ways to approach the Dolden madness, even though I suggest small portions of him for afternoon courtesy, you see. He is a bit too much, most of the time… without getting too much done, so to say. He’s sort of shaking doors and smashing windows, but he seldom administers poems.

Veils - Studies in Textural Transformations (1984 - 1985).

Dolden: “Veils […] is a series of textures or walls of sound, which act as an invitation for the listener to explore an environment where new acoustic sensations and associations can be discovered. The texture, a sustained chord of usually 14 - 56 notes, is constantly transforming by changing the instrument type that is articulating the sound (i.e. from strings to voice to brass to piano to marimba to glass etc.) No electronic effects were used and only straight recordings and mixing of acoustic instruments were used. However, the sound source or instrument type at any moment is not usually obvious to the listener, hence the sound sources are veiled. This veiled sound is created by three main factors: the extensive multitracking (from 180 to 280 tracks of the same instrument are used at any moment), the tuning of the chords (microtonal intervals which do not occur in our normal 12-tone equally tempered tuning system), and the recording method of close miking in a dead acoustical space which brings out aspects of each instrument type that we normally do not hear.”

This, though, is poetry; spider web poetry, thin smoke poetry, resounding silence poetry through trembling minds. The resounding of the first part of Veils is a majestic gesture into infinity, very unlike the window smashing and door-shaking that I have complained about. I float through these layers of semi-transparency in a spirit-in-flight sensation, a bit like what I felt in the movie 2010, or in some cinematic expressions of Tarkovsky. This notion is only strengthened and reinforced by the second and third part of Veils - mysterious monoliths afloat in the space-time continuum, in chords that reach for infinity in wonderful gasps for space… mythical objects slowly turning around themselves in the timeless flow of mind, of Rigpa, the state out of which all rise; all phenomena of this unexplained existence of our and everything else…

Seuil de silences

Below the Walls of Jericho (1988 - 1989).

Dolden:“The title is only a loose reference to the story in the Bible. What interests me about the story is the idea of a large mass of people knocking down a wall through the use of sound. The story gives credence to the notion of music as a catalyst for social change. Beyond the sheer physical impact that a large number of sounds contain, music is a form of language, which is capable of stimulating thought. The power of music lies in the simultaneous physical and intellectual seduction of the listener.”

A quite wonderful, glassy sound, organ-like, subdued-fanfare-like, opens Below the Walls of Jericho. This shiny, honey-dew fluidity develops into standing walls of dense, gray sound - with glittering, glimmering sensations built into to them, dark percussive elements - like falling rocks down a wintry Lapland slope - growing in terrible intensity… until a tiny screw of a sound suddenly lets loose some silence which, however, slips away like the tail of a lizard, leaving us in a magnificence of over-toned, interstellar cruelty, in a realm where all is shine, cold, bright shine… and again - as before, sometimes, with Dolden - I get these icy notions of alien horizons on worlds we know nothing about, and the unknown gathers incredible strength in a pumping, pulsating wheezing of giant properties of alienation; scary headphone adventures!

Surely, this didn’t come across this brightly and ingeniously on the earlier release. I heard it the first time when it appeared on the Cultures Électroniques release from the GMEB competitions in 1990, where it won the composer the first prize for electroacoustic composition. Dolden’s reallocated attention has brought this piece into new luster, new shine. It’s quite amazing, really.

There are many layers of sound relieving each other or adding to each other, and the sheer roughness and simultaneous clarity of some of them bring on levels of corrugated auditory surfaces I have never heard or touched before, bringing me into joyous discovery for the first time in a long listening while, as Dolden actually manages to mix my perceptive senses in hitherto unknown ways, mysteriously; tactility and hearing, vision (bright!) and smell (acrid!). This is a hit! The rhythmic properties have me gasping for air in a similar way, so strong, manifold, un-ending, loopless, ever into an elusive distance, yet firm on your tympanic membranes and on your skin, your heart beating behind the sound, below your breath, inside a dream…

Gravity’s Stillness. Resonance #6 (1996) for violin or viola & tape; Julie-Anne Derome [violin].

Dolden:“The work is based on fairly simple melodic and harmonic ideas. The interest for me in this type of work is to use the recording studio to create a series of distinct sound worlds, or orchestrations, based on these melodic and harmonic ideas. The tape becomes the catalyst for creating the changes in mode and tone. The live soloist repeatedly states the melodic ideas in a simple to very virtuosic manner.”

A dark motion rising cautiously out of semi-instrumenty realms, emerging into clarity and tactile reality, spreading its auditory fragrance like opening petals… and you feel yourself soaring down inside the space inside these petals, as if docking with a giant space ship - and yet it feels so familiar behind that veil of uncertainty and semi-transparent reality, the violins, the orchestral familiarity, hundreds of years of tradition carried towards you on outspread fingertips, like a gift from undisclosed benefactors… There are some incredibly close encounters herein, with the strings, which you practically ride, trembling madly with them… only to find yourself suddenly distanced into the room, the strings grouping themselves neatly into an ensemble up on a little stage… and then you’re down into the instruments again, the strings of the violin fully charged high-voltage transmission lines through your vicinity; danger! Dolden mixes these two aspects seamlessly, this closing in and distancing, this old tradition ensemble familiarity and this latter day electronic havoc! Splendid! And Julie-Anne Derome makes a thrilling contribution!

Caught in an Octagon of Unaccustomed Light (1987 - 1988).

Dolden:“The composition continues the composer’s development of a musical language based on the color of unusual or unaccustomed acoustic sounds. In this case, the predominant use of inharmonic timbres (metal, multiphonics and a non-octave tuning system) creates the language that for the most part our musical tradition has ignored. A series of five sections, each of which is based on specific sound sources, has the listener caught by their interactions. Musical continuity is maintained by the reuse of similar gestures, colors and tuning system. Overall structural integrity is achieved through a palindromic ordering of the sections. For example, the first and fifth sections use the same sound world, and likewise the second and fourth sections use another sound world. The third or middle section contains aspects on both sound groups.”

It’s hammer time right off, as you veer here and veer there… eventually catching hold of some materializing matter in the shape of sturdy tools inside a machine-scape of some industrial environment, as the industrial sounds re-group into Christmas time Santa workshops of speedily constructed toys and half-perverted goblins by endless conveyor belts… and it’s a Disney culture gone seriously wrong. After a while a peculiar, metallic percussion, irregular, brings on reminiscences of Harry Partch and John Cage, and I feel right at home in my intellectual, academic predispositions… but it wouldn’t be like Dolden not to amass things, though between these moments of catharsis he lets little details build strange, twiggy, thorny environments to scratch yourself bloody on if you don’t watch it! The slow, spacious anonymities that Dolden sometimes allows for in this piece, almost inwardly thoughtful in a roomy, thin gamelan, result in generously emitted beauty of sound that I bathe my perception in, like when nocturnal flakes of snow fall through the circle of light of a street lamp, when the town is sleeping silently; these cold crystals melting on your cheek.

The Vertigo of Ritualized Frenzy. Resonance #4 (1996) for reed instrument and/or piano (or accordion) & tape; François Houle [clarinet]; Leslie Wyber [piano].

Dolden:“Much of my work begins by using the tape medium to create musical situations and dialogues that would not be possible with a fixed live ensemble. In this case the live duo is confronted with jazz, rock or chamber music created by various string, metal or wind orchestras. At times the live parts seem independent of the tape and at other times the two elements dissolve into each other. These different allusions to musical reality are based on a very simple melody which keeps coming back in an almost irritating manner.”

The inconspicuous beginning mix of roughness and timbral modality builds up strong levels of conviction, so watch your output levels. A playful melody, sort of heard from way inside a hall, or from behind a corner in a restaurant, reveals where the musicians are poking about in there scores, kind of nervously and absentmindedly, a half hour before they have to start playing for real, for pay. There is a distance in the way Dolden has smeared the sounds across a wall quite far away, across the dancing floor. The music itself is semi-jazzy, semi-cocktail-party-licked, easy going, swirling about in short, close motions, never traveling too far off from the instruments that produce the sounds observed.

In the Natural Doorway I Crouch (1986 - 1987).

Dolden:In the Natural Doorway I Crouch is inspired by the interaction of the two distinct sound worlds: plucked metal strings and wind instruments. The composition is divided into three sections of 3, 5 and 7 minutes, each of which explores the relationship between the sound worlds as they are constantly changing. This movement in sound is evoked by the title, which suggests the transformations from one state to another, as in a doorway that acts as a passageway between areas of sound. In most cases, the crouching is only momentary as we spring from one area to another. The tuning of the composition involves a system of just intonation, developed by the composer, in which the harmonics of the fundamental(s) are systematically changing register in relation to each other.”

This piece was one of the first Dolden works I heard, on Cultures Électroniques Volume 3, presenting the winners from the Bourges competitions of 1988. It’s probably one of his most spread works too. I’ve come across it here and there. To begin with it has a spooky conversational quality, the likeness of voices soaring about inside instrumental and/or electronic sounds, as if matter was raising its jittery subatomic voice to the level of human hearing, just to scare us real good at last… The flakes of sound are heavy in the void, tumbling about like forlorn celestial debris, traveling like that forever, or maybe one day crashing down on unsuspecting civilizations on blue spheres in revolving spiral galaxies, cutting everything very short…

Morse-like percussive codes are emitted from inside the body of sound; trembling, shivering cries of beings lost behind malevolent horizons, divide from us by impossible gaps in time and space and simultaneity…

There is an ominous, fateful feel to this work, as if it was describing events so vast and so immensely forceful that acceptance is the sole possible attitude from our point of view. This music seems to deal with the inevitability of the sun eventually turning into a red giant, or events like that, or perhaps with the natural loneliness of the soul - and one feels, as a reaction to Dolden’s music, an urge to escape existence in matter to existence in spirit, which is all there really is to hope for; and wouldn’t it be nice to cut this endless hunt for sub-atomic particles short, realizing with the string theorists that all is vibrations of different frequencies, also confirming the conviction of Stockhausen and others of a celestial music; the universe understood as an endless composition…

This boy certainly wants to invade all your senses and completely take them over.

Review

Tiina Kiik, The WholeNote, no. 8:10, November 1, 2003

Electroacoustic music fans will be thrilled to know that these two new releases featuring the work of Paul Dolden and Roxanne Turcotte are extremely high quality in praduction values, generous in duration, wide-ranging in styles, thought provoking in musicality, and well, just plain great!

As Dolden and Turcotte’s compositional styles are as different, to my ears anyway, as apples and oranges, comparisons cannot really be justified. As the liner notes describe, Dolden’s music is “the missing link between jazz and rock and the high-brow concert tradition” while Turcotte’s musical approach rests on a film-like art of integration.

Paul Dolden’s release contains three works from the composer’s output from the mid to late 1980s and two works from 1996. Most impressive is how Dolden can manipulate a wall of sound to create musical juxtapositions, especially in the opening track, Below the Walls of Jericho (1988-89). My pick, however, has to be The Vertigo of Ritualised Frenzy, Resonance #4 (1996). For tape, with Francois Houle on clarinet and Leslie Wyber on piano, this is a rocking, thumping, virtuosic display of streetsmarts, intellect and psyche. Timeless.

Most of the works featured on Roxanne Turcotte’s CD are more recent. A more introspective nature and thus compositional style is evident here. She also displays a quiet wit in Y---OW (1985, 2002). The telephone and its users play a starring role in this version of a work which the liner notes explain was put together from 22 tapes of the multimedia work of the same name. Turcotte is described also as a sound designer and nowhere is this more evident than in the title track Libellune (1999-2002). A glorious and reflective work for ethnic wind instruments (as performed by Michel Dubeau) and tape, aural imageries are created effortlessly by Turcotte’s exact sense of movement and timing.

But once again, the music is great. Both first-time and seasoned electroacoustic listeners are well advised to check out both discs.

Both first-time and seasoned electroacoustic listeners are well advised to check out both discs.

Critique

Éric Normand, JazzoSphère, November 1, 2003

empreintes DIGITALes, étiquette montréalaise spécialisée dans les musiques électroniques et électroacoustiques entreprend cet automne des fouilles dans l’œuvre surprenante du compositeur canadien Paul Dolden. Voilà d’un coup ces trois CDs d’œuvres datant de 1984 à 1996, «entièrement retraitées, remixées et remasterisées par le compositeur en 2001-02». La musique de Dolden est caractérisée par l’utilisation de centaines d’enregistrements instrumentaux et vocaux combinés en couches multiples. En matière de musique acousmatique, son œuvre est singulière puisque l’utilisation de sources instrumentales s’adjoint à un sens aigu de l’orchestration et place la musique aux antipodes des «musiques de bruits» que suggère souvent l’acousmatique. On pourrait peut-être parler d’une approche symphonico-numérique où Stravinsky et Xenakis reviennent en écho, machinés dans une hybridation maximale des styles. Les œuvres mixtes du compositeur (avec François Houle à la clarinette et Peggy Lee au violoncelle, entre autres) font particulièrement preuve de sa sensibilité musicale et nous entraînent dans des moments d’intensité incroyables. Ce petit survol de l’œuvre de Dolden démontre admirablement la singularité de son langage (et son importance) qui, tout en s’approchant d’un discours symphonique radicalisé, ouvre la porte aux influences du jazz, du rock et des diverses possibilités venues de l’électrification et de la capture du son. Une œuvre à découvrir d’urgence.

… à découvrir d’urgence.

Review

François Couture, AllMusic, October 21, 2003

Released as part of a reissue program for which Paul Dolden “reprocessed, remixed and remastered” his works from the ’80s and ’90s, Seuil de silences is actually an augmented reissue of his 1990 CD The Threshold of Deafening Silence. Dolden’s music is all about density and this density is obtained at a cost: dozens of hours (80 of them for Below the Walls of Jericho) are used in a 15-minute piece, split into a hundred layers of processed tapes. The analog technology of the ’80s meant that a price in sound quality had to be paid for such large-scale sound manipulations. So Dolden revisited his old pieces, cleaning up and remixing to bring out details that had been buried in the past. The result is staggering, giving his music a power matched only by John Oswald’s mammoth works. Seuil de silences reprises the three pieces on the original album: Below the Walls of Jericho (if sound can tear walls down, this piece will do it: listen to it at high volume and you’ll think that the speakers are advancing on you), Caught in an Octagon of Unaccustomed Light, and In the Natural Doorway I Crouch. But the album also introduces two more pieces that are part of the “Resonance” series, pieces for soloist and tape. The first two “Resonance” pieces appeared on 1994’s L’ivresse de la vitesse. These two were composed after the release of that album (1996) and have gone through the same refurbishing process. Violinist Julie-Anne Derome is at the center of Gravity’s Stillness. Resonance #6, while The Vertigo of Ritualized Frenzy. Resonance #4 features pianist Leslie Wyber and clarinetist François Houle. But Dolden’s music has the biggest impact when it consists of tape alone — although in this case “alone” designates a multitude.

Dolden revisited his old pieces, cleaning up and remixing to bring out details that had been buried in the past. The result is staggering…

Critique

François Tousignant, Le Devoir, October 11, 2003

Si bien de ces pièces ont déjà été portées au disque, nous ne sommes pas pour autant en présence d’une réédition. La musique «électronique» a en effet ceci de particulier que sa technologie change et que des idées parfois rendues un peu maladroitement à cause justement de limitations techniques peuvent, avec les avancées des ordinateurs, se refondre en une meilleure mouture. C’est le pari que tient ici Paul Dolden en offrant des ‘remix’ de pièces qui ont déjà fait sa gloire. Pari gagné, car tous les propos du compositeur pour justifier sa démarche s’avèrent nécessaires. Oui, on entend bien mieux — et bien plus — d’événements dans ces bandes chargées souvent au bord du supportable. L’approche de Dolden a ceci de paradoxal que, cherchant le «seuil du silence», il nous assomme de son(s); sans gratuité, ce canardage acoustique fait aspirer au silence. Avec la «nouvelle version» de Below the Walls of Jericho, tout devient effectivement plus clair, l’idée plus nette. Parfois, le retour sur de vieilles œuvres produit une forme d’académisme; ici, il n’en est rien. Dolden se montre un peu comme Léonard de Vinci qui, jusqu’à sa mort, a raffiné sa Joconde, qui reste comme le premier monument de cette incroyable saga des ‘works in progress’. Ceux qui connaissent ce répertoire seront ravis de retrouver un autre visage de cette musique. Les néophytes, eux, n’ont plus aucune raison de lui résister.

… en offrant des ‘remix’ de pièces […] tout devient effectivement plus clair […] Dolden se montre un peu comme Léonard de Vinci…

Critique

Réjean Beaucage, La Scena Musicale, no. 9:2, October 1, 2003

empreintes DIGITALes fait paraître ces jours-ci trois disques de Paul Dolden. Il s’agit de L’ivresse de la vitesse, paru à l’origine en doublé et dont les disques sont séparés pour cette nouvelle édition «retraitée, remixée et remasterisée». Le troisième, Seuil de silences, réédite des pièces parues en 1990 sur le disque The Threshold of Deafening Silence et présente deux nouvelles pièces mixtes (avec Julie-Anne Derome au violon pour Gravity’s Stillness. Resonance #6, de 1996, et François Houle à la clarinette et Leslie Wyber au piano sur The Vertigo of Ritualized Frenzy. Resonance #4, aussi de 1996). Si on est ici au seuil du silence, on n’y entre pourtant pas souvent. Dolden travaille l’épaisseur du son comme un sculpteur et n’hésite pas à placer les unes par dessus les autres des centaines de pistes, ce qui donne une perspectives sonore impressionnante. Les œuvres «anciennes» (la plus vieille date de 1986) ont certes bénéficié des possibilités de remixage offertes par les perfectionnements technologiques les plus récents et la lourde pâte sonore qu’affectionne le compositeur y gagne en netteté. Toujours aussi impressionnant. 4/6

Toujours aussi impressionnant.
Blog