This album has one cut… the whole album. Starting with silence… then gradually letting the listener in on what is happening… Calon DOES explore space. Les corps éblouis was commisssioned by the Ina-GRM and the French state. On a formal level,Les corps éblouis is a work in which, through the development of the principle of metamorphosis, the result is that the Form is only legible superficially, and that it grows on the listener according to an irrational process.

And music itself is heard using an “irrational process.” Oh yes, composers and other music professionals can use their “rational mind”… to take things apart, and sometimes to enjoy, but basically music is visceral. You either like it, it touches you somewhere… or it doesn’t. Lots of times one can hear a piece for the first, second or third times and dislike or be indifferent to it. And then the fourth time, love it! I have found that I didn’t like certain music in a period of my life and then heard it again years later and either understood or enjoyed it.

This “underwater” … uh… “outer space” … “inner space?” … oh, whatever! IS enjoyable to me on the first hearing, but then, I LIKE space music. I like the listening rather than knowing the HOW of creation.

Les corps éblouis is sanity making for me. It almost sounds like what I imagine my blood coursing through my veins would sound like it if I was in one of those “no reflection” sound chambers. Especially part way in to the “music”… a rushing sound like blood in the ears. We ALL like to “hear” ourselves… this is sorta like that.

Now I hear the ocean, a tinkle of glass wind chimes, a glitter of bugs. Of course that’s what I hear… you may hear other things in it. A towing of whales… a metallic sound next. since I hear ocean, I hear the rigging of sailboats. But maybe tomorrow I will hear it different. There is alot here to hear! And it grows and grows!

The now familier “computer” sounds… things played backwards… maybe. Eeks and Awks, but all in soft, interesting combinations… nothing to upset the listener from reverie. You must be able to tell by now that I hope you will support this artist and buy his album!

Two composers you [will] not find on Miniatures concrètes are Christian Calon and Claude Schryer, but they both have recent releases on the label.

Calon’s work Les corps éblouis is presented on a CD EP (22:45) of the same name. It seems an artists study in string tension. Sounds leap out of silence as an electrical guitar is used to in every conceivable way short of strumming. The results are further treated, for a final effect that is alien and complete.

This is an interesting proposition, which can also be applied to the fine 22-minute composition Les corps éblouis by Christian Calon. The challenge for him was to create a piece based on metamorphoses. He uses as the single source an electric guitar, transformed to the point of being unrecognizable, which spirals its way up the auditory tract.

Je doute que trois minutes suffiraient à Christian Calon (né en 1950 à Marseille), dont le splendide Les corps éblouis, dans la série compact-compact — espèce de maxi-single —, dure 23 minutes. Si jamais une musique existait pour n’être écoutée qu’au casque, c’est celle-ci. Écoutez-là attentivement, surtout la fin — première citation de Jimi Hendrix dans la concrète?

The most recent release in the so far very interesting ‘budget’ [compact-compact] series of this fine electroacoustic label is by a relative newcomer who also has a full-length release available on empreintes DIGITALes. Les corps éblouis is a piece realized using only sound material from electric guitar, which has been manipulated to such an extent that only a few passages are recognizable as said instrument. Nicely flowing in that GRM style you know and love, and free from the abrupt, jarring sounds of much tape music, but not without a certain controlled intensity. The piece builds to a spiraling and dramatic (though not over-dramatic) climax which concludes with a nod to Hendrix. Worth checking out; this is one of the good ones.

A single, self-contained, metamorphosing composition, Les corps éblouis (The Dazzled Bodies) clocks in at a little over 22 minutes. Calon provides a provocative range of sonic disturbances throughout this piece, ranging from ethereal driftings to tense, terse and turgid jabs into the surrounding silence. Impressively, Calon has total control over the variety of moods that his piece conveys (everything from peacefulness to schizophrenia), and expresses them superbly with this electroacoustic utterance. Highly recommended!