Clocking in at exactly 60 minutes Figures is Robert Normandeau’s latest release of acousmatic music. The opening piece is Le renard et la rose (The Fox and the Rose). This is a concert suite composed from two sound sources: music commissioned for The Little Prince and the voices of the actors involved in the recording of the story. It is light and bubbly with laughter layered and processed through a chain of effects. The second piece is Figures de rhétorique which combines tape and piano. It has a cosmic feel at times similar to early Pink Floyd and Stockhausen. The third composition is Venture, named after the 60s group The Ventures. But it is more than that. Venture refers to all the progressive rock music of 60s and 70s. Normandeau states that Venture is composed exclusively of fragments of that music. Unmistakably, there are bits and pieces of The Beatles’ Revolution 9 and Pink Floyd’s Grand Visier’s Party. I am uncertain of the other sources, but the resulting Venture is worth the price of this CD alone. Figures closes with Ellipse, a tape piece commissioned by Arturo Parra for him to accompany Normandeau on guitar. It sounds like heavily processed acoustic guitar scrapings, tappings, and noodlings. Or is it a swarm of angry alien bees? Figures is the high point for me of the recent empreintes DIGITALes releases.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right? Wrong — at least when it comes to electroacoustics, the beautiful province of Quebec compares very well to any other region of the world. Call me chauvinistic, I don’t care: Quebec is home to several composers of tremendous talent and influential professors.

My goal is not to turn this article in an analytical essay, but, as a music reviewer and unstoppable listener, I am convinced that there is such a thing as Québécois electroacoustics. Despite the stylistic variety among our composers, I detect a Québécois “sound,” something that sounds to me neither British nor French or German; something that calls to me and speaks to me in a language more immediate and easier to understand.

This “unity in diversity” is probably, at least in part, due to the lasting influence of a small number of key composers whose academic teachings have shaped our younger generations. I am thinking first and foremost of Francis Dhomont and Yves Daoust. So let’s begin this sound path with a Frenchman so Québécois at heart that he was awarded a prestigious Career Grant from the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec. I can sincerely recommend all of Dhomont’s albums: his graceful writing, his narrative flair and his intelligence turn any of his works into fascinating gems. I have often publicly expressed my admiration for Forêt profonde (including in my first Sound Path, so I will skip it this time), but Sous le regard d’un soleil noir, his first large-scale work, remains an international classic of electroacoustic music, and his more recent Cycle du son shows how close to perfection his art has grown — the piece AvatArsSon in particular, my first pick for this Sound Path.

If Dhomont’s music is often constructed following large theoretical, literary and sociological themes, Yves Daoust’s works lean more toward poetry and the anecdote. Most of his pieces betray his respect for the abstractionist ideals of the French school, but his seemingly naive themes (water, crowds, a Chopin Fantasia or a childhood memory) empower his music with an unusual force of evocation. His latest album, Bruits, also displays a willingness to grow and learn. One is tempted to hear the influence of his more electronica-savvy students in the startling title triptych.

To those two pillars of Quebec electroacoustics, I must add the names of Robert Normandeau and Gilles Gobeil. Normandeau is a very good example of what I consider to be the “typical” Québécois sound: a certain conservatism in the plasticity of sounds (the result of the combined influence of the British and French schools); great originality in their use; and an uncanny intelligence in the discourse which, even though it soars into academic thought, doesn’t rob the listener of his or her pleasure. My favorite album remains Figures, in part because of the beautiful piece Le Renard et la Rose, inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novel Le Petit Prince – and also because of Venture, a tribute to the Golden Age of progressive rock (a pet peeve I share with the composer, might I add). As for Gobeil’s music, it is the wildness of wilderness, the turmoil of human passions, the sudden gestures, the copious splashes of sonic matter thrown all around. If La mécanique des ruptures remains an essential listen, his most recent album Le contrat, a collaboration with guitarist René Lussier, stands as his most accomplished (and thrilling!) work to date.

These four composers may represent the crème de la crème of academic circles, but empreintes DIGITALes’ catalog counts numerous young composers and artists whose work deeply renew the vocabulary of their older colleagues.

I would like to mention Fractures, the just released debut album by Christian Bouchard. His fragmented approach seems to draw as much from academic electroacoustics as from experimental electronica. Thanks to some feverish editing and dizzying fragmentation, Parcelles 1 and Parcelles 2 evoke avant-garde digital video art. I also heartily recommend Louis Dufort’s album Connexions, which blends academic and noise approaches. His stunning piece Zénith features treatments of samples of Luc Lemay’s voice (singer with the death-metal group Gorguts). I am also quite fond of Marc Tremblay’s rather coarse sense of humor. On his CD Bruit-graffiti he often relies on pop culture (from The Beatles to children’s TV shows). His piece Cowboy Fiction, a “western for the ear” attempting to reshape the American dream, brings this Sound Path to a quirky end.

Serious or facetious, abstract or evocative, Québécois electroacoustic music has earned a place in the hearts of avant-garde music lovers everywhere. Now it is your turn to explore its many paths.

Electroacoustic music is an acquired taste. Like it or not, radio and television have conditioned us from an early age into accepting some musical (tonal and rhythmical) molds as being “normal.” Therefore, electroacoustics, along with other sound-based (in opposition to note-based) forms of musical expression like free improvisation, is perceived as being “abnormal.” That’s why a first exposure to this kind of music often turns into a memorable experience — for better or worse. Many factors come into play, but choosing an album that offers an adequate (i.e. friendly and gentle) introduction to the genre will greatly help in letting the initial esthetic shock turn into an experience of Beauty and mark the beginning of a new adventure in sound.

My goal with this sound path is simply to point out a few titles that I think have the potential to encourage instead of discourage, titles opening a door to a new musical dimension. Of course, this selection can only be subjective. But it might be helpful to new enthusiasts and to aficionados looking for gift ideas that would spread good music around. After all, Christmas is only a few weeks away!

Bridges

We usually develop new interests from existing interests. What I mean is: we explore music genres that are new to us because a related interest brought us there. That’s why when it comes to electroacoustic music, mixed works (for tape and instrument) or works related to specific topics are often the best place to find a bridge that will gently lead the listener into the new territory. For example, people who enjoy reading travel literature will find in Kristoff K.Roll’s Corazón Road the sublimated narrative of a journey through Central America. Those still young enough to enjoy fairy tales (I’m one of them) will find in Francis Dhomont’s Forêt profonde an in-depth reflection on this literary genre as inspired by the works of psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim, in the form of a captivating work with multiple narratives (in many languages) and electroacoustic music of a great evocative strength. Lighter and more fanciful, Libellune by Roxanne Turcotte finds its source in childlike imagination and is in part aimed at children without over-simplifying its artistic process.

Guitar fans can turn to Parr(A)cousmatique, a wonderful project for which classical guitarist Arturo Parra co-wrote pieces with some of Quebec’s best electroacoustic composers: Stéphane Roy, Francis Dhomont (Quebecer at heart, at the very least), Robert Normandeau, and Gilles Gobeil. The latter has just released an album-long piece, Le contrat, written with and featuring avant-garde guitarist René Lussier. Lussier’s followers and people interested in Goethe’s play Faust (and its rich heritage) will find here an essential point of convergence, another bridge.

Essential listens

Those who want to explore further will probably want to venture into more abstract electroacoustic art. I recommend starting with the Quebec composers. Chauvinism? No way. It’s just that the music of composers like Dhomont, Normandeau, Gobeil, Yves Daoust, or Yves Beaupré seems to me to be more accessible than the music of British or French composers. It is more immediate, has a stronger impact (Gobeil, usually hitting hard), a more pleasant form of lyricism (Daoust, Beaupré), more welcoming architectures and themes (Dhomont, Normandeau). If you need places to start, try Normandeau’s Figures, Gobeil’s La mécanique des ruptures, Dhomont’s Cycle du son, and Beaupré’s Humeur de facteur.

That being said, there are hours upon hours of beauty and fascination to be found in the works of Michel Chion (his powerful Requiem), Bernard Parmegiani (La création du monde), Jonty Harrsison (Articles indéfinis), Denis Smalley (Sources/Scènes), and Natasha Barrett (Isostasie), but they may seem more difficult or thankless on first listen. And for those interested in where these music come from, the EMF label offers L’œuvre musicale, the complete works of Pierre Schaeffer, the father of musique concrète and grandfather of electroacoustics.

Tiny ideas

A compilation album has the advantage of offering a large selection of artists and esthetics in a small, affordable format. Available at a budget price, eXcitations proposes a strong sampler of the productions on the label empreintes DIGITALes. The albums Electro clips and Miniatures concrètes, along with the brand new volume of the DISContact! series, cull short pieces (often under three minutes) to trigger interrogations and discoveries in those with a short attention span.

And finally, for those of you who want to take their time and explore in short steps, the Cinéma pour l’oreille collection produced by the French label Métamkine contains many wonderful 3” CDs, 20 minutes in duration each, for a reduced price. The catalog includes titles by renown composers such as Michel Chion, Lionel Marchetti, Michèle Bokanowski, Bernhard Günter, and Éliane Radigue. These tiny albums are perfect for gift exchanges.

Of course, all of the above are only recommendations. The best sound path to discovery is the one you follow by yourself, little by little.

Best listens!

Released in 1999, Figures is Robert Normandeau’s third CD. It contains four works, all around the 15 minute mark, all created since the release of Tangram (1994), the composer’s previous album. The first piece is his most acclaimed Le renard et la rose winner of the Golden Nica at the 1996 Ars Electronica competition (the piece had already been included on three different compilation albums). Revolving around Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince, it uses as sound samples the music Normandeau wrote for a radio adaptation of the book, plus the voice of the actors. There is very little left of the original text, as the composer furthers his explorations in sound-speech relations. Yet the narrative translates into a gripping cinema for the ear. The other highlight on this CD is Venture, an unusual exercise for Normandeau. Here he pays tribute to his progressive rock background, using as source material quotes from various 1960s and 1970s LPs. Bits of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, the piece that introduced many prog fans to classical music thanks to Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s album, surface here and there. The piece is not a Christian Marclay-like collage: much of the material is manipulated to the point that it is hardly recognizable, but the standard prog rock gestures are cleverly underlined without reducing the genre to a handful of clichés. Play “spot the tune” to find quotes from The Beatles’s A Day in the Life, King Crimson’s Formentary Lady, Yes’ Close to the Edge, and many more. Compared to these two impressive works, Figures de rhétorique, for piano (played by Jacques Drouin) and tape, and Ellipse composed with samples of guitarist Arturo Parra, lack panache.

Robert Normandeau’s recent compact disc, Figures, presents four of his acousmatic compositions from the latter half of the 1990s, documenting his continuing investigations of the medium and its stylistic evolution. The results of these explorations are more focused and less physical than his earlier work, yet for the most part they clearly retain Mr. Normandeau’s distinctive compositional fingerprint.

Although the liner notes speak of the composer’s ideal of a “cinema for the ear,” these works contain a noticeably smaller number of “concrète” source sounds than his pieces of the 1980s, with more focus on playing with and sonically developing the material he does utilize. Thus, although the “cinema” ideas and elements are still present, they are less literal than in his earlier works.

The four pieces on Figures are arranged chronologically (quite convenient for a reviewer!) and span the years 1995–1999. The first, Le renard et la rose (1995), employs as its source material elements from the music and voices for a radio production of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince which Mr. Normandeau scored. The piece begins wonderfully. First, a cascade of laughing voices erupts from nowhere. Then, after about five seconds, it is suddenly replaced by a churning pulsed texture of vocal ostinati, taken in part if not entirely from the initial laughing sounds. The result is simultaneously artificial and primal, and quite intriguing. These ostinati are quite prominent during the work’s first section, where they die away, return, and evolve many times.

Le renard et la rose is structured in five sections, and each of these has its own distinct sound and types of activity. Primary among the activities are pulsed rhythms, as percussive patterns are repeatedly employed to propel the music throughout the piece.

Overall I am struck by two things in this composition. First is Mr. Normandeau’s impressive sense of pacing. He seems to be constantly pushing the piece forward, sometimes forcefully, sometimes gently. But even in its moments of repose, this music does not sit still. When its ostinato engine is shut off the sonic environment is still fluid. To me, this work is a “short” 14:45.

The second striking element, as in many of this composer’s works, is his talent at choosing and sculpting materials. Nearly every sound has a bite to it, a sense of physicality and place. The “place” here, however, is not as literal as in earlier works, in which Mr. Normandeau would actually include recordings of subway stations, children in the park, the seashore, and so forth. In Le renard et la rose and the other works on this CD, I sense that the individual sounds are abstractions that retain enough qualities to point to their origins—original sounds or sets of sounds which often never appear themselves. While Mr. Normandeau has been processing sounds for years, his newer pieces atomize the source sounds more. Meanwhile, he makes less effort to perceptually tie unprocessed sounds to their processed relatives. Combining these well-defined sonic scenes and colors with the work’s swirling activity, the listener has much to enjoy.

The second piece, Figures de rhétorique (1997), is quite different from Le renard et la rose and is not quite so successful. It is scored for tape and piano, and in this recording the piano part is played by Jacques Drouin

Mr. Normandeau states in his liner notes that he constructed the music in four movements, creating structure by utilizing devices of rhetoric. He categorizes these speech-types into “figures of meaning (hyperbole, litotes, metaphor, oxymoron, parable, and pleonasm), words (alliteration, embellishment, and rhyme), thought (allegory, apologue, bombast, irony, and tautology), and construction (antithesis, ellipsis, repetition, and reticence).” Although the piece is sectional I could not identify specific rhetorical devices while listening—I assume that the composer would not mind this. Mr. Normandeau also limited the source materials for the tape part to sounds of the piano, which seems reasonable. However, the sound world which he creates in Figures de rhétorique does not seem nearly as vibrant and intriguing as the rich palette of sound colors he created for Le renard et la rose. It sounds as if he began with a limited set of sounds and then allowed them to remain rather static throughout the piece. He does explore several varied sonic environments, but within each of these the sounds themselves as well as the gestures they create don’t vary much. Possibly these repeating gestures represent specific rhetorical figures?

It could be that the composer purposely left space in the tape part for the piano to fill. The piano part was evidently written after the tape part, which makes this seem natural. However, if this is the case, then he overestimated how much the piano would dominate the soundscape. I think that both the tape and piano parts in this piece would benefit from more variation in their materials and the treatment of these.

Venture, the third work on the disc, definitely does not suffer from a poverty of material. Named after the rock group The Ventures, this tape piece was composed using numerous moments from progressive rock songs of the 1960s and 1970s. Sadly, I am not as well-versed in this genre as the composer, but I have heard enough Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP), King Crimson, and Yes to identify with his endeavor and recognize more than a few tiny moments from the quotations. Essentially, Mr. Normandeau’s idea is that many of these songs served “as sonic archetypes for an entire generation of composers, my generation…” This work is his tribute to that music.

Beyond the reason for its composition and origin of its materials, Venture stands as a rather satisfying piece of music. Mr. Normandeau begins with a set of intriguing sonic materials that he colors often beyond recognition using signal processing. With this arsenal, he sculpts a twisting, slippery world of acousmatic music that lasts for nearly 20 minutes without losing much freshness.

The collection ends with Ellipse (1999). This tape piece was commissioned by guitarist Arturo Parra and shares most of its material with the composer’s guitar and tape piece, L’envers du temps (1998, 2000), also written for Mr. Parra. Ellipse begins with an agitated polyrhythmic texture of noises taken from the classical guitar, derived from strumming and scraping strings, knocking on wood, turning tuning pegs, and so on. The first 2.5 minutes of the piece feel very physical and have an itchy, insect-like energy. After this, the music segues into a bath of harmonic textures only to quickly return to the first material, this time overlaid with more and even stranger sounds. Once again, as the work progresses, the sense of pacing gives it a catand- mouse energy that is quite enthralling.

As he did in Le renard et la rose, Mr. Normandeau uses rhythmic activity to retain a sense of energy throughout most of Ellipse. However, in the latter piece these sounds are less frequently organized into pulsed polyrhythmic stretches. Instead, the inner rhythmic activities of a variety of tapping, strumming, and scraping sounds overlay each other without always creating a composite organization. Ellipse also seems to possess more regularity in its progression of ideas than the earlier piece. There are no “jump cuts” between sections. Instead, the materials are consistently dovetailed, allowing elements to fall from the texture and resurface repeatedly, appearing in a new context each time.

Overall, the pieces on this CD, as well as many of Mr. Normandeau’s other works, succeed best when he allows them to be (or at least seem to be) a bit out of control. This is not to say that I only like the busy sections of the music; rather, that I enjoy his music when it seems to roam, seems to have its own purpose, when it takes chances and allows itself to be quirky. For instance, I love the tag endings he added to both Venture and Ellipse — short, throwaway moments that risk silliness, but work to my ears. Mr. Normandeau’s best work involves a sonic kaleidoscope, a tour of musical places, a sort of spelunking through sounds more than a cinema of the ear. Thus, even though these recent pieces feature fewer real-world sounds than his earlier works, they still have highly dramatic profiles. On this CD, only Figures de rhétorique fails to conjure the feeling of three dimensional adventure. His music is usually not about economy of material, but in this piece he attempts a quite strict control. Unfortunately, the material he chooses and what he does with it do not work out so well. However, his other successes clearly outweigh this aberration.

In the end, what I appreciate about Mr. Normandeau’s work is that his music generally seems to have no pretentions, even at its most symphonic. He is willing to let his guard down, to be funny, to admit that he used to listen to ELP all the time — and that maybe sometimes he still does! (I have to admit that I smiled when I caught his references, especially the bits of The Beatles’ Revolution #9.) Yet the real success is that his music grabs me. And I like that.