A student of composer Yves Daoust, winner of various prizes for electroacoustic compositions and founder of the live electroacoustic quartet Theresa Transistor. He seems to me the typical sort of composer you’d find on this label. In 24-bit they present three of his pieces, Impasto, Parcelles 21 and Objet menacé. The first is the longest and a triptych about expressionist abstract painters (Pollock, Riopelle and Shiraga), and it sounds indeed like expressionist abstract music. Lots of sounds thrown together and then mixed, edited and treated further. At least that’s my best guess upon hearing this music. Sounds roll about like thunderous storms and walls of snow bursting into masses tumbling down the mountain. A nice piece for sure, but perhaps at forty-five some minutes all a bit long. Luckily Parcelles 21 — a revised version of Parcelles 1 and Parcelles 2 — provides a more quiet piece, but is also moving all over the place. It’s hard to say, in both of these pieces what it is that Bouchard is using sound wise. Field recordings perhaps, but also down right electronic matter, and maybe acoustic instruments being treated in one way or another. It’s hard to say, as the level of abstraction is quite high on this release. The final piece is Objet menacé and the cover says it’s a symphony for parking meters, and brings up the massive attack again of the first piece. While some of this music sounds alike what similar composers do on this label, but throughout I seemed to like this more than some of the others on the label, but it’s not easy to pin down why that is. Maybe it’s the level of disturbance, or the notion of improvising with his sound material and the editing thereof? Maybe it’s the overkill in sound anyway? I am not sure. Maybe it’s the heat that provides me from thinking straight.

Automacité is firmly rooted in two sound worlds: Bouchard’s gestural language speaks of Montréal’s vital acousmatic scene, and the album’s silvery abstract dynamism recalls the later work of so-called IDM (intelligent dance music) pioneers Autechre.

Attracted to robust impacts, acute pin pricks of sound, and jittery crawls across glistening aural surfaces, Bouchard still creates the impression of a beat, even in the absence of a metric pulse. This bit of percussive punctuation serves his work well. Amidst the storm of stammering vocal reminiscences, thick serrated tones, crystalline trickles of noise, and bright pixelated beams, these temporal markers provide some welcome beacons.

The scope of the disc, though, is much wider than this dense metallic foliage. Things also slow down and thin out into sleek fluorescent ribbons and other longer, smoother shapes. While still maintaining almost unmanageably high fidelity, and perforated with little glitchy spurts, Parcelles 21 has the surface texture of an ice sculpture — cold, reflective, and transparent.

Striking — without compromise — a fascinating balance between traits of numerous electronic musical styles, Automacité is very rich and engrossing—albeit a somewhat brazen sonic experience.

Christian Bouchard, avec son disque Automacité, propose une musique très énergique, voire frénéti que. Le montage très serré, les sons électroniques et les artefacts de traitement plongent l’auditeur dans un univers franchement glitch.

Impasto, un triptyque de quarante-cinq minutes, est, aux dires du compositeur, une pièce sur les peintres expressionnistes abstraits (Pollock, Riopelle et Shiraga). La forme générale est volontairement intangible et sans climax, ce qui rappellerait le style «All-over» de Pollock et des autres. Ce type de transposition de la peinture vers l’art sonore est très risqué: le «All-over» fonctionne bien pour une forme qui se déploie dans l’espace, mais le résultat est moins heureux si elle se déploie dans le temps. Malgré cela, Bouchard s’en tire plutôt bien. On aurait souhaité une structure plus claire, mais la matière sonore est si habilement articulée qu’on ne s’ennuie que rarement.

Les deux autres pièces du disque sont plus tranquilles. On est toujours dans le glitch, mais le rythme est moins effréné et les formes sont un peu plus classiques. La dernière pièce, Objet menacé, est bien équilibrée: les moments plus fougueux sont contrebalancés par de profondes respirations et les sons électroniques sont parfois ponctués de sons concrets plus sensuels. Cette symphonie de parcomètre est, somme toute, plutôt sympathique.

Automacité features three compositions (2006-10) in 5.1 format (DVD-A and DVD-V) [and stereo]. Bouchard is an agile sound artist, and he knows to step back from his sound sources and the concepts underpinning his compositions. In Objet menacé, the parking meter at the core of the work is quickly forgotten in favour of the intrinsic qualities of the sounds it makes. The magnum opus here is the three-part Impasto, 45 minutes of criss-crossing aural fluxes in homage to expressionistic/abstract painters. It’s lively, saturated, free of any markers — you can lost in it, and it’s perfectly fine to get lost in it.

The finalists discs for Opus Prize 2010-11 (Disc of the Year — Musique actuelle, Electroacoustics) are:

• Automacité by Christian Bouchard
• De type inconnu by the duo of the same name (Sylvain Pohu, Pierre Alexandre Tremblay)
• Désordres by Roxanne Turcotte
• Éclats by the group [iks]
• Quelques reflets by Pierre Alexandre Tremblay

The 15th gala will take place on January 29, 2012 at Salle Bourgie of the Pavillon Claire et Marc Bourgie of the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal.