After a fine album on Mitek, we hear from la Bonarelli again through this hazy/clear vinyl 10” e-p on No Type. And it’s once again quite good, doing electronic glitchdubs that may not be terribly original any more, but which are challenging listening experiences in their own right. One is actually pretty groovy. Which is nice…

La musique électroacoustique est comme la peinture abstraite, sa séduction ne réside pas dans le figuratif ou la mélodie mais dans les textures sonores, dans la jouissance du son brut. Claveciniste et facteur de clavecins, Yves Beaupré a été aussi conseiller musical et à la prise de son. Ceci l’amène à s’intéresser à la qualité sonore puis, par la suite, à se passionner pour l’électroacoustique. Humeur de facteur est le résultat de cette passion. Yves Beaupré nous invite à découvrir les sons et les bruits qui habitent son atelier. Un voyage insolite et intrigant.

Oeuf Korreckt’s CD Podweek is released by the label No Type as one of four upon the label’s launch. On this album Oeuf Korreckt (aka Quebec based Frédérick Blouin) has produced a variation of techno tracks from hardcore oriented to more melodic and ambient, but always with a strong rhythmical base and melodic content. For the creation of his music Oeuf Korreckt uses the currently quite obsolete pre-windows Tracker assemble software like Impulse Tracker or Scream Tracker. By using the Tracker software the tracks on this CD very much get a 1980’s techno pioneer vintage sound. Most of the instrument sounds have this particular 8 bit quality.

But by cleverly arranging various sounds it is possible, even with the cheap sounds from the Tracker software to produce full sounding and complex arrangements. Obviously in many compositions he uses an extra drumcomputer for the drumtrack. That way he has a broader palette of drum beats and control over percussion sound and mix. And many songs feature the typical computer-game sequences to complement the limited sound palette.

The way the tracks are mixed and the quality of the recordings varies. On some tracks he manages hardly to escape sounding like the background music of an early computer game. The Podweek Theme features could probably be transferred to a soundtrack with little effort.

Tracks, like Pochacco, Alright Well Okay or Four Channels sound as if they’re recorded straight from the Tracker software with a little added reverb for ambience. On other tracks like King of the Elephants and A Ride in Elephant City recording is more worked at. Percussive and sequenced sounds are mixed in the stereo field. The voice of a young boy makes Alright Well Okay more interesting to listen to.

The works on this CD date from 1995 to 2001, making it a kind of retrospective and they give a good impression of what Oeuf Korreckt is capable of. The Podweek CD also gives a good impression of the musical development in the period in which the recordings were made and the roots of this particular kind of electronic music. His early work tends to be more digital hardcore oriented with strong straightforward hardcore beats. King of the Elephants and A Ride in Elephant City both feature the well known Rotterdam hardcore beat also known as Gabber. His more recent work gets more melodic and rhythmically complex and resembles the work of Orbital, Black Dog Productions and even Kraftwerk.

With the Podweek CD Oeuf Korreckt has released his musical heritage of a little less than a decade. Because of using a limited set of musical tools the variation in sound is a bit small and the compositional limitations of the tracker software make that the whole record sounds a bit the same. And doing so the variation in emotional content of his songs is also limited. The limitations of his musical tools also are his strength. One has to listen more closely to his music to discover how his music was made. He succeeds in creating interesting and entertaining music by exploring the sonic and compositional boundaries of the quite obsolete Tracker PC software. Oeuf Korreckt is a master in his field.

Coin Gutter’s Lullaby from All your dreams are meaningless (No Type). A musique concrète song, Lullaby mixes the soothing sounds which moms and pops like to let their wee children listen to with bursts of noise and digital fuckery. A song for the 21st century child. Well, a song for my 21st century child. This song will ensure that no matter what sort of music my soon-to-arrive son ultimately finds to annoy Dad with, I’ll have scrambled his noodle first.

I first discovered this label through Humeur de facteur, an electroacoustic recording created by Yves Beaupré from the various sounds made during construction of a harpsichord. It was a fascinating and revelatory experience, and Aparanthesi by John Oswald is no less so.

Oswald, born in 1953 to what he describes as “a profoundly amusical family”, is a familiar Canadian figure in the world of new music. He created Aparanthesi, of which two versions appear on this disc, as an exploration of a single pitch, an idea with which he has worked in several earlier compositions. “I was hoping to find an interesting way to follow… the morphing of a pitch through various instrumental, acoustic and electronic forms,” he tells the reader in a lengthy interview contained in the CD package. The results are quite remarkable. Using the sounds of piano, cello, birds, thunder and rain, cattle, a foghorn, and more, Oswald has created an extraordinary, interior/exterior auditory experience. There isn’t sufficient space here to go into further ‘technical’ details; follow the links at www.electrocd.com if you’re curious. What I personally appreciate is Oswald’s invitation to tune into a particular musical sound-world, and then to follow its effects upon one’s own inner world. Kudos to empreintes DIGITALes for providing us with the opportunity.

The Holidays are closing in. Are you wondering what gifts to buy this year? You’re looking for the original gift, the one that will surprise and please? Why not expand the musical horizons of a loved one, a colleague at work, or a cousin you haven’t seen since last Christmas? Here’s my highly personal selection of gift ideas to introduce someone (or yourself, you’re allowed to indulge from time to time!) to the wonderful world of “musique actuelle.”

That good ol’ song

It may seem a bit easy, but everyone likes a good song. That said, we don’t all have the same definition of what a good song is. And the artists in DAME’s catalog take some liberties with this format — that’s what makes things exciting. But Geneviève Letarte’s Chansons d’un jour will please anyone looking for songs with intelligent, accessible melodies and poetic lyrics. The soft melancholy of Chants des adieux, chants de la solitude will profoundly move dreamers in search of a different voice (Lou Babin’s, irresistible).

You don’t understand French? The lyrics of Jerry Snell’s album Life in the Suicide Riots will make you think hard about the world we live in. And the chugging guitar riffs of André Duchesne ’s Locomotive will catch the attention of any rock fan, even one deaf to French. Speaking of rock, the deconstructed rock of the all-female group Justine can keep you busy for a while, lyrics or no lyrics. Their first album (Suite) is a powerful mixture of progressist rock, while their second Langages fantastiques leans more toward improvised songs. If you want a taste of what songwriting avant-garde artists can come up with, try the compilation album Chante! 1985-2000, a wide and wild selection of unusual songs.

Party time

A time for celebrating, letting off steam, and disobedience, the party when applied to music can give way to a distortion of admitted rules. L’Orkestre des pas perdusinjects a new form of circus life into fanfare music, an infectious R ’n’ B (rhythm ’n’ brass, of course) that will refresh any parade. Its cousin Les Projectionnistes (both bands are led by Claude St-Jean) trades circus for rock and the brass section transforms from funny fanfare to frenetic funk. Taking a different approach, the Fanfare Pourpour leaves the official parade attire behind to favor the spontaneity of a street fanfare. It’s music for “everyone” (Tout le monde, the title of their first album) without dropping to the lowest common denominator.

In a similar spirit, but adding an East-European flavor and an incredible dose of energy is the group Interférence Sardines, which features two members of the neo-trad group Les Batinses. Jean Derome et les Dangereux Zhoms walks a jazzier road, but its frivolous side easily becomes delightfully exuberant. The group’s three albums are all highly recommended, but Carnets de voyage remains an excellent place to start. And I find the same spirit of excessiveness and raw emotion in La boulezaille (Pierre Langevin and Pierre Tanguay) and Plinc! Plonc! (Jean Derome and Pierre Tanguay), two albums where world music, jazz and free improvisation collide.

And to boldly go where few have gone before

Maybe you would like to go further and hook someone on a kind of “musique actuelle” that is more daring and abstract. Here are a few key albums from DAME’s catalogue in improvised and electronic music.

Martin Tétreault is one of the most fascinating experimental artists right now. His technique at the turntable spins 45 questions per minute. His recent album with Diane Labrosse, Parasites, puts disquieting quiet sounds under the microscope. And Studio — Analogique — Numérique, his fresh collaboration with the Japanese mastermind Yoshihide Otomo, proposes cutting-edge sonic research in very original packaging: a box set of three 3” CDs.

A pillar of the avant-garde music scene since the early ‘70s, Fred Frith remains the favorite of many connoisseurs. The two albums by the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet (with René Lussier, Nick Didkovsky and Mark Stewart) are essential listens. DAME also distributes the titles released by Frith’s own Fred Records.

One of the first groups from the DAME stables to have explored electroacoustic improvisation, the Klaxon Gueule trio revels in noisy textures and demanding pleasures. Their last two albums Muets and Grain met critical acclaim. And I also want to mention the Ohmix compilation album, a daring electronic project where select artists (including Martin Tétreault, David Kristian, John Oswald, Terre Thaemlitz, and Ralf Wehowsky) remix the albums of the label Avatar.

Finally, instead of sending out the usual Christmas cards, consider the sound post cards produced by the label Ouïe-Dire. These are regular post cards accompanied by 3” CDs from French experimental artists. And happy Holidays!