This CD is just wonderful, that is the only way how we could start this review.

Darren Copeland’s compositions are made entirely from environmental sounds. Which results in atmospheric music. Five compositions are there on the CD, sometimes you wonder to be in a somehow dark atmosphere surrounded with the sound of extincted annimals. A soon later you are in the middle of a beautifull nature with full of tranquillity. Sounds from nature comes and go combined with unknown sounds that all brings an other dimension in the atmospheric compositions.

This CD is just wonderfull, that is the only way how we can end this review.

Born in Weimar in 1966, Hans Tutschku has been studying, composing and performing electroacoustic music for a number of years with various groups and institutions. He has an impressive CV of compositions and multimedia productions to his credit. Moment presents 5 compositions dating from 1991 to 1998. Each of these pieces can be seen as an exercise in integrating vocal and instrumental sounds into electroacoustic compositions, done — in Tutschku’s own words — “with the esthetic concern to maintain the cultural context of the source”. The first, extrémités lointaines, uses recordings he made during a concert-tour of Asia, of city sounds, the music of churches and temples and children’s songs. Presented with “these unexpectedly rich sound worlds… “the intensity of the impressions experienced during the trip has resulted in a dense compositional structure”. This density has been achieved with stunning results, the sound manipulations are incredibly complex and delicate, and these qualities can be found throughout these recordings. The second work, … erinnerung… is based on a poem written and performed by Spanish author Antonio Bueno Tubia. The recording of the reading “forms the starting point for acousmatic transformations.” What results is a “musical translation” of the poem, created by first cutting up the sounds of the poem into minute pieces and played back “polyphonically to create dense sound textures”. The fourth piece, Sieben Stufen, is one of the most notable compositions here. It is based on the poem Verfall by Georg Trakl (1887-1914), and uses two readings of the poem (spoken by four different voices) as its sound sources. The four key words of the poem, Verfall/ruine/decline, Abend/au soir/evening, Glocken/cloches/bells and Vögel/oiseaux/birds, are sung in fourteen pitches (seven in German, seven in French). The results of Tutschku’s acousmatic treatments are truly remarkable, haunting and mysterious. The compositions on this disc each have their own intense structural constraints, almost all with numeric fixations. Les invisibles is based on the number five (5 parts, each divided into 5 subparts, the harmonic material based on 5 chords of 5 notes each), and Sieben Stufen is based on the number 7 (seven sections, compression of the piece into 49 seconds, two sets of vocals in seven pitches each). These works are structural marvels. Also, the sound-sculpturing and production work here are of superb; the sounds breathe a life and dimension of their own, and seem to crawl out of the speakers and into the space around you. Highly recommended.

Marc Tremblay teaches in Matane (Québec). He first studied percussion at the Chicoutimi conservatory and then studied electroacoustic music in Montréal. He has collaborated with Michel Ratté and Martin Tétreault and is currently working on a western film project with writer Gilles Arteau.

Bruit-graffiti is his first record. Marc Tremblay approaches electroacoustics from a “popular” or “vernacular” angle. Bruit-graffiti offers six works based on everyday soundsand noises. This is not musique concrète, as the listener easily recognizes the sound sources. In fact, the identification process is part of the listening pleasure in this case. Tremblay is a quoter.

The first track, Vroum, opens with a “Beep Beep” sampled from The Beatles’ Drive My Car. The tone is set. This piece explores the sonic possibilities of the automobile — a nice concert of horns. In Conte sous la lune (Tale under the moon), Tremblay taps in his childhood — excerpts of Canadian children shows resurface here and there. Cowboy Fiction is the best work on this disc. It is constructed from two western movies (El Dorado and The Searcher) and various related sound sources like samples of Hank Williams. The atmosphere of these movies is brilliantly rendered. «… Ceci est un message enregistré…» (This is a recording) digs into the world of communication through the telephone and it leaves room to erotic phone calls. L’argent… toujours l’argent! (Money… always money!) reminds us of what makes the world go round. All these pieces run between 10 and 15 minutes long. Résidus (clip dadaïste) (Waste), is a 5-minute dadaist clip and the most disgusting piece of electroacoustics I ever heard. A tribute to Marcel Duchamp’s Fontaine, this piece uses noises heard in a public restroom. Very graphical, this work leaves no room to the imagination. The first two minutes are funny, but then I start to get sick. Still, interesting in a very weird way. Bruit-graffiti doesn’t belong to the same realm of electroacoustic art than Francis Dhomont’s poetry. More popular, graphic and accessible, even funny at times, it’s easy to listen to and has many surprises. I liked it a lot.

Very strongly recommended ★★★★

Promotional material for this album described it as “cinema for the ear”, and that is a pretty accurate description. This is “sound as art” in the truest sense of the term. Grinding, whirs, buzzes, snaps and bangs are all brought together to create a suggestive sonic soundscape. Diane Labrosse (samples), Ikue Mori (electronic percussion) and Martin Tétreault (turntables) have created a work which achieves an almost organic quality from the most inorganic resources. if you are looking for something that is daring and goes nowhere near the mainstream, then this is for you. Most of the moods captured on this disc are stark and hollow, giving the listener a true taste of coldmetal machinemusic. One could almost subtitle this “Symposium for Junkyards”. If you enjoy the true industrial approach (ie Einsturzende Neubauten), then you will undoubtedly love the challenge of this work. One suggestion: Île Bizarre must be heard on the best possible sound system that you can get access to. Sound enthusiasts will love turning track two (Ad Ventum Capere Grandes Machinae) up as loudly as their stereo systems will permit!

The Enormouslessness of Cloud Machines collects seven multi-channel works by composer and sound artist Steve Heimbecker. Some of them, like The Forum for the Alienation of Art, are for use in sound installations. In this case, the piece is a three-minute audio tape that combines bird songs with a sort of spoken manifesto. It is intended to be played continually for the duration of the exhibition. Another work, Spin Cycle, derives rhythmical sounds from the manipulation of a 17-second quadraphonic sound sample of a spinning roulette wheel. A kind of subdued counterpoint is produced here — limited in color, but strikingly hypnotic. Tic Talk #1 is a live quadraphonic work that involves open microphones, delay lines and 4 kitchen timers. The piece lasts as long as the kitchen timers are running. It is no less hypnotic than Spin Cycle, although the timers add a sense of urgency that disembodied sound objects do not. Clearly Heimbecker is an conceptualist! His works are not songs, sonatas or symphonies. Nor, in a way, are they really music. They are more like collages in the spirit of a Kurt Schwitters. The disc’s title is particularly apt because Heimbecker’s pieces have such a profound sense of timelessness. They seem quite capable of going on forever. Heimbecker is a consummate artist capable of simple, unique and beautiful things, and this two disc set is a fine homage to beautiful art.

The Montréal based label empreintes DIGITALes has just rereleased Corazón Road, a wonderful cd by the [French] electroacoustic duet Kristoff K.Roll (Carole Rieussec and Jean-Christophe Camps). This record was originally released on SONARt in 1993.

Kristoff K.Roll invites the listener on a trip to Central America and Corazón Road acts as the diary. Through the sounds of travelling, the snippets of conversation (in English, French and Spanish), the smiles of people encountered, the exhilaration of the discoveries but also the solitude and mostly the adventure into human nature, this record talks to the listener, it appeals to us. And it takes us on a 75-minute journey where electroacoustic art is not the austere object some would like to believe, but the artistic, emotive and humane transcription of an experience very hard to translate (I know: one of my research fields in literature — my day job — is travel literature). The electroacoustic art of Kristoff K.Roll is akin to Francis Dhomont’s aesthetics (a non-linear storyline, the importance of speech), particularly his Forêt profonde (also on empreintes DIGITALes [IMED 9634]).

Very strongly recommended: ★★★★