Through these interstices, when conscience — this present to one’s self — falls asleep; through this tiny little interval between two instants, something arises, something you had never thought of; The erring ways of thought; through the cracks thus created, we lend our voice to the characters that rule over an unknown existence.

These sounds are too rich of all their possible existences; I cannot imagine all of their resonances; so, turning my gaze to the inside, I can see them, swirling, fleeting, inert…, gravitating, dithering, dragging themselves amorphously, in a poetic space to be.

Between dream and thought, your head full of desires of sounds and absolute, you hit the sinuous, uneven, unmarked road; appreciate it now, for you know nothing of the instants to come.

Discovering the acousmatic world through listening to Voyage au centre de la tête (by François Bayle), I am shaken by an earthquake that leaves me filled with wonder. My musical world would change; everything had to be reviewed: references, markers, certitudes, loves. I had to make room in my head and my heart for the new, the hitherto unknown.

And then, there was Sous le regard d’un soleil noir and Forêt profonde (by Francis Dhomont) heard in concert — they turned my head and soul upside down. Two deep and decisive experiences. Followed by so many others just as beautiful.

In front of this other infinite world, the world of sounds, can you reinvent the rules of the game, set — conscious — limits, make choices, again and again? Accept the vertigo, the wandering, and the unexpected?

— Ingrid Drese, Brussels (Belgium) [English translation: François Couture, vi-09]

Ingrid Drese belongs to that category of composers who have their own style, a unique and intimate form of expression. This music features a stunning level of cohesion that seems to unfold, piece by piece, like chapters of a long tale, cycling through the multiple facets of a deep form of sensitivity, always staying true to herself yet in constant renewal. No repetitions; instead, the gradual unveiling of an endearing soliloquy. Through her choices in morphology, her writing — finely detailed, researched, elegant and always on the move — the way she richly develops her sonic materials, her “figures over figures” and her spectral preferences leaning toward the treble register (there is some Bayle in her), this composer is offering us music that is both talkative and secretive, occasionally whispered or even trembled, made with finesse but firmly chiseled, simultaneously discreet and quivering.

To step inside this universe of swarming, of innumerable rustling, is to discover the luxuriousness of a complex world inhabited by “êtricules” — Michel Chion’s short sonic molecules invested with internal life — and streaked by sudden flashes that may have been held back for a long time.

Occasionally drawing inspiration from meaningful and vocally-rich poetic texts by Étienne Leclerq (Tout autant) and Marc Jaffeux (Sept œils sauvages), Ingrid Drese’s music also introduces us delicately to the mysteries of Paysage avec miroir, Inés Wickmann’s troubling video, only to step back behind what the image says, accompanying it brilliantly with an economy of means.

— Francis Dhomont, Avignon (France) [English translation: François Couture, vi-09]

For their trust and help throughout the process, I would like to thank Annette Vande Gorne, Francis Dhomont, François Bayle, Daniel Teruggi, Christian Zanési, Robert Normandeau, Denis Dufour, Raphaël de Vivo, and Jean-Marie Simonis; for their friendship and camaraderie: Renaud De Putter, Marc Jaffeux, Étienne Leclercq, Thérèse Malengreau, Elizabeth Anderson, Inés Wickmann, Elsa Justel, and Marc Moniez.

— Ingrid Drese, Brussels (Belgium) [vi-09]