Pete Stollery’s acousmatic piece Still Voices (part of the Gordon Soundscape project) was a finalist at the Sounds Electric ’07 Competition (Ireland), and at Musica Nova 2007 International Electroacoustic Music Competition (Czech Republic).

Continuation of the Rien à voir series, the Akousma (4) mini-festival presents electroacoustic music in its many forms on November 28 to December 1, 2007 at the Monument-National in Montréal. Will perform: Miguel Azguime, Natasha Barrett, Nicolas Bernier, Georges Forget, Gilles Gobeil, Laurie Radford, Robert Normandeau, and the winners of the Hugh Le Caine Award of the 2007 SOCAN Foundation Awards for Young Composers. A unique event, in Montréal. Not to be missed!

Great guitarists — Andrew York, Eduardo Isaac, Luis Orlandini, Ana Vidovic — and electro composers — Francis Dhomont, Gilles Gobeil, Robert Normandeau, Stéphane Roy, Mauricio Bejarano — will be at the 2nd Festival Internacional de Guitarra Clásica that will take place from November 6 to 10, 2007 in Santafé de Bogotá (Colombia). Arturo Parra will present the complete Parr(A)cousmatique in concert on November 9 at Escuela de música y audio Fernando Sor.

Is it possible to have personality and character in electronic music these days? Sure, as I’m sure it will be possible (not just in electronic music) to have both these qualities till this planet won’t be frozen by the next glaciation. After this opening remarking of the fact “everything has been said before” make sense, but it’s not a good reason to sit down and think like you’re ten thousand years old, let’s speak about this cd. A_dontigny mixes many electronic styles with a great and unusual skillfulness and also shows he’s really able both in discerning interesting samples but he’s chosen the right collaborations to enrich this or that passage. I’ve just heard a few releases on this label (and Meta_xu is still one of my personal faves), but I’ve had the impression they’re into electronic music almost at the edge of being experimental for what regards artists work on the tracks. This Canadian musician sometimes cuts the tracks by skiping and using glitches, sometimes he breaks everything fragmenting and manipulating a sample in order to make it workable with the superimposition of a second or even third layer. He’s a “perverted” propension for putting together melodies with unnatural electronic manipulations closer to a dj tradition than “contemporary classic electronic.” While we’re far from one of those wishy-washy Afx Twin clones, I’m sure dear ol’ Richard D James would start nodding having an hard-on with these post-jungle, post-classical, post-electronics, lost in acid, fragmented tracks. I think the fact a composer / musician like Paul Dolden is among the guests of this release says a lot concerning the fact Geisteswissenschaften is filled with songs made with heart and brain and not trying to be part of this or that subgenre of music. Sometimes you have chaotic tracks, sometimes rhythmical irregular tempo changes, sometimes it all sounds like your cd player is skipping randomly stroke by a digital tornado, but in the most of the songs you’ve a solid construction and above all after having survived the first blasts big part of the release approaching toward the end becomes softer an more quiet… almost “easy.”