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!

Unlike all of the other disks from empreintes DIGITALes that concentrate on the work of a single composer, Kristoff K.Roll is the performing/composing duo of Carole Rieussec and Jean–Christophe Camps, who compose and improvise, attempting to capture the poetry of everyday life from amongst the musical worlds and their codes.

Described as a musical travel diary, Corazón Road takes you on a sonic trip around Central America. Like any diary, small excerpts and fragments reveal only a little of the whole. So it is with Corazón Road. You have to listen to the disk right through to get the impression of what Camps and Rieussec are trying to create. In its treatment of the collected sonic environments this is not merely an ethnomusicological set of location recordings, neither is it a musical work in the mould of Telemusik, rather it is more like a hörspiel — a play in four acts with a prologue and two interludes in which sonic set pieces, vignettes, raw recordings and composed material rub shoulders to create a hybrid that is more like the scrapbook we all used to keep combining photos, tickets, postcards and our own written memories.

This disk is intoxicating from beginning to end. As a listener you become so absorbed in the sound world that the numerous sections of the work become irrelevant after a while — they become mere parts of a bigger journey. One of the reasons that this sound world is so engrossing is because of the sense of timing and pacing of material. Camps and Rieussec have an extremely keen ear that carefully balances the composed and the anecdotal, activity and repose. One of the best example of this occurs in the central part Belize City where the quiet and evocative Derrière la fenêtre (Behind the Window) and Un bateau arrive (A Boat is Arriving) are juxtaposed with the raw, raucous sound of the Belizean Rappers rounded off by the advice all travellers should heed once in a while, It will be better for you to take a bus

Diary extracts, photos and maps in the liner booklet complete the travelogue. Though these are interesting, you could do no better that to listen and let you imagination do the rest.

Corazón Road is the musical diary of a trip the Yucatán peninsula and Central America. Using tapes he made during this trip, Kristoff K.Roll process them and combines the results with electronics. Amidst the flora and fauna of Central America, you also hear a Coke salesman, someone selling chiclets, a balloon vendor, etc. The result is an interesting travelogue of electroacoustic music at times restful and others energetic.

Derde in de reeks en het meest beklijvend is de heruitgave van Corazón Road van Kristoff K.Roll’ niet de naam van een muzikant maar van het duo Carole Rieussec en Jean-Christophe Camps. Corazón Road is een auditief dagLoek van een reis in ‘9’doorheen Mexico, Belize en Guatemala. De klankopnames krijgen een sobere, muzikale ondersteuning toegevoegd. De pakkendste hagmenten zijn de jonge rappertjes in Belize die spontaan in de microfoon van Camps en Rieussec beginnen te wauwelen en de aankomst in Guatemala, alwaar de vrolijkheid en kleurenrijkdom vrijwel onmidUellijk ter onder gaan in een klaagzang en een auditieve evocatie van de eeuwige tropische regenstormen die dat land sinds dag en eeuw teisteren.

Probably the most fertile grounds for contemporary electroaoustic (experimental sound collage) composition is in eastern Ontario. From there you will find a wholly new aural universe in [empreintes DIGITALes]. Recent releases on the label include Moment by Hans Tutschku and Corazón Road by Kristoff K.Roll. One of Tutschku’s pieces is a travelogue of Southeast Asia through sonic collage of field recordings. Another piece is the transformed words of a poem. In a setting of haunting, industrial sounds like distant machines the effect is quite mysterious. Corazón Road is another peculiar travelogue. This is a road diary of Kristoff K.Roll’s journeys through Central America. Snatches of conversation and the mystique of lonely roads marks this album.

In the tradition of French musique acousmatique, cinema for the ear, comes Kristoff K.Roll’s Corazón Road. It is a musical travel diary of the duo’s trip through Central America — but don’t worry, it’s more interesting than your aunt Twilla’s slide show of her trip to Palm Beach! What Kristoff K.Roll’s members Carole Rieussec and Jean-Christophe Camps do here is more of an artistic impression of their voyage than a travelogue. The piece’s five movements each have a distinct personality and seem to correlate with distinct legs of the journey. Everything has that wonderful ethereal, disembodied quality that is so characteristic of acousmatic music. I like Belize City, with its strong Jamaican flavor, and Guatemala, which starts with the sounds of torrential rain and ends with the fascinating sounds of some kind of local evangelical tent meeting.