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Review

Ed Pinsent, The Sound Projector, December 14, 2022
Monday, December 19, 2022 Press

Belgian-born Marie-Jeanne Wyckmans is another composer inspired by cinema — and also by dance, theatre, video, TV, and radio, areas in which she has worked in her career as a foley artist. Her Trajectoires is mostly made from field recordings, sound effects, and phonography, and many of these nine compositions tell stories, or at least contain strong suggestions of narrative, often with a travel theme. At least two works are inspired by literary sources, in particular two poets. Water and oceans seem to crop up quite a bit, even to the extent of her use of the word “waves” to convey her intentions, and the best pieces here have that precise effect of enveloping the listener in sound — a “dive into bleak magma”, as she calls it. The centre-piece of the album is three substantial works about the pandemic, composed between 2019 and 2021; she wanted to “hold a mirror” to the situation, to show mankind how it really is, and she was not afraid to reflect back some unpalatable truths, telling us things we might not want to hear. She achieves this with vivid images of sulphurous air, anger setting everything on fire, all of mankind screaming in pain, and a world depleted and destroyed by our own insatiable greed — the latter of which is, arguably, one of the many causes of the pandemic in the first place. The trilogy does end on a note of hope — Fin de crise — but not before Wyckmans has issued her stark warnings with the implacable certainty of a true sybil. Personally finding a lot to enjoy and appreciate in the ideas and music of Marie-Jeanne Wyckmans, her originality and her sympathetic humanism.

Personally finding a lot to enjoy and appreciate in the ideas and music of Marie-Jeanne Wyckmans, her originality and her sympathetic humanism.