Here is another intriguing release from the adventurous folks at Diffusion i Media. Apparently, Mr. Roy has been involved in the visual arts and the literary world for quite some time now, and he has also won several awards at various worldwide experimental music competitions. Plus, he currently teaches at Université de Montréal! Anyone with credentials as impressive as this obviously knows what they are doing, and this level of artistic experience is very evident on Kaleidos. This is electroacoustic music achieved by guitar, tape, and various other sources. It is pure sound chemistry which attempts to establish a fascinating sonic soundscape without any nod to convention. Roy succeeds in reaching this much strived for territory in which rules simply do not exist. A very bold work.

This is a two CD set of electroacoustic music by another artist on the Diffusion i Media label. Upon one listen, the listener can immediately notice the very obtrusively cinematic nature of this music. Barroso uses a variety of equipment (including a Yamaha DX7!) to create an intense musical climate. And calling it intense is putting it mildly. These CDs never come up for air… almost every second is soaked with an undercurrent of drama and tenseness. Just imagine the music that you hear in a film just before the monster jumps out from around a corner. That is basically the sound of Délirantes. En Febrero Mueren Las Flores features clangorous industrial noise, yet this is a fine distinction. Overall this is highly climactic music in the vein of Bernard Hermann, yet it very guickly reaches its peak and tires itself out. Very intense but somewhat one-dimensional.

A prize-winning trilogy of narrative pieces produced for German radio during 1996-97, and inspired in part by the improvising shills of panticipating musicians. All three stories articulate the experience of migration, with various voices woven through a mix of instrumental sound and environmental recordings. Silvia Ocougne’s guitar and voice ebb and flow with the rhythms of waves and wind, the mewing of gulls, sea traffic and whales calling. The multiple voices of Shelley Hirsch roam amongst nomads while children play hide and seek. The psychological contusions encountered at checkpoints and on border crossings are mirrored in Joëlle Leandre’s double bass. Compelling work, finely conceived and sensitively realised.

On the eight pieces presented on Anecdotes, composer Yves Daoust uses motifs from Western classical music as springboards to wholly original audio collages. Daoust further combines elements of musique concrète into these works. As the works of Beethoven and Bach are now culturally dissipated into commercials and film scores, Daoust diffuses these themes into a sonic kaleidoscope of environmental sounds and samples. The samples are truly mundane, but taken out of context and placed on the canvas of instrumental flotsam, they become mysterious and full of meaning. Each piece is composed for assembly from audio tape segments. Often, a solo instrument is present to provide the transmogrified melody. These instruments include piano, flute, and accordion.

Musik von Intelektuellen für… Intelektuelle? Sicher bin ich mir bei Sources/scènes da nicht, wenn dieses Werk über die Klangexperimente des Elektroakkustik Gurus Denis Smalley auch nicht für das Mainstream Publikum geeignet sein mag, aber dennoch Freunde von avandgardistischen Sounds und düsteren Soundtracks gleichermaßen ansprechen könnte.

Dem einem dürfte diese CD durchaus auch durch sein bedrohlich, pulsierendes Flair gefallen, wobei dies nicht veraussetzt, daß man sich intensiv mit den Motiven auseinandersetzt. Der typische Hörer solcher Werke versucht aber die Intention, die hinter den ‘Krachwogen’ und ‘stillen Momenten’ steckt, zu entdecken und zu verstehen. Hierbei behilflich ist — wie auch beim Werk von Adrian Moore — das ansprechende und erklärende Artwork. Zu den fünf Titel gibt es ausreichend Informationen, die neben den verwendeten ‘Instrumenten’ bzw. ‘Werkzeugen’ auch die Absicht des Künstlers offenlegen. Denn es ist nicht unbedingt offensichtlich oder leicht zu erkennen, daß z.B. beim Track Empty Vessels aus dem Jahr 1997 sämtliche Klangkonstrukte aus dem Zusammenspiel von leeren Behältern und Umgebungsgeräuschen entstehen, auch wenn der Titel beschreibend sein dürfte. Tides besitzt durch sein Zusammenspiel von Wasser und Klängen eine beinahe schon entspannende Funktion, ein Moment um sich von den Soundexplosionen, die einen bei Base Metals immer wieder hochschrecken lassen, zu erholen. Tip: Niemals auf dem Discman hören. Eine Austeuerung der Lautstärke ist nicht möglich, da hier der Begriff ‘Laut/Leise-Dynamik’ sehr streng genommen wurde…

Louis Dufort studied electroacoustic compositions in Montréal. Now he spend his time with composing for Marie Chouinard contemporary dance company, his work for the artistic committee of ACREQ, and the creation of hybrid and unbridled musical experimentation.

In meantime I’ve been looking in some literature, I can’t say that I know much about electroacoustics. So I’m now searching were it comes from or what intentions it have. Maybe someone can help me with some information (kriswilms@hotmail.com). It is my intention to write a little article about it.

Transit (1998), the first composition on Connexion, is described by Louis Dufort as: “A work that makes use of continuous discontinuity.” What is the meaning of something like that? It has something to do with discontinuity: the structure seams to be irrational. So the structure is discontinue. There has to be continuity in this discontinue structure: same sounds come always back, always manipulated in other ways. Lather on there also come voices in the composition.

Pointe-aux-Trembles (1996) is rather a gentle piece, where the stress is on silence or something that seems to be silences.

Zénith (1999): ‘the formal expansion of form’ as Louis Dufort describes it, seems more organic than for example Transit.

There is a smooth Décap (2000), a composition for the composition ‘Le cri du monde’ of Marie Chouinard (more exactly ‘A study for wrists and ankles’) is a much more aggressive piece that in his heaviness sometimes reminds on the John Zorn project ‘God.’ In the piece, drum’n bass seems to be an important influence.