The March 24, 2009 concert of the Ciclo electrónica series in the Sala de Cámara of the Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid (Spain) presents electroacoustic music from Belgium. The programme includes Figures d’espaces by Annette Vande Gorne as well as works by Todoroff, Pousseur, Kupper and Goeyvaerts.

There is an interesting quote on the cover of Chroniques d’une séduction: “since I cannot grasp the meaning of the words, my neighbor’s conversation becomes beat, movement, pace” — that exactly happened to me last night, as I heard voices on the otherwise silent street. I vaguely heard it was about not being able to get in the house, but the finer points of the conversation were lost on me. So I understand more what Tremblay says. He’s a composer and classically trained guitarist and in the three pieces here on his second solo CD show his diverse interests in instrumental music, electronic music and field recordings. It’s on Empreintes Digitales, which guides the listener in a certain direction. Although I think Tremblay’s disc is more interesting than some of the releases I encountered from this label in the last year, also Tremblay doesn’t escape what I think is part of the overall Empreintes Digitales sound: the tumbling of sounds, the pitching up and downwards of the material — be they instrumental, vocal, field recordings or purely electronical. But Tremblay adds a certain element of anarchy to it I think, which makes this throughout more enjoyable than some of the more rigid releases. Children’s voices, street sounds and in some parts of Empathies entropiques even reminding me of Nurse With Wound. Quite a nice work.

The Canadian label empreintes DIGITALes offers a couple of new releases from award-winning electroacoustic composers, both pressed up as DVDs to offer the listener the choice of stereo or 5.1 surround-sound listening. [Montréal-based] French composer Ned Bouhalassa arranges cut-ups from his huge collection of field recordings on Gratte-cité (IMED 0895), and thereby fancies that he is ‘playing’ entire cities the same way a DJ plays old vinyls dug from his crates. This conceit is reflected in the cover art, where an old-fashioned tonearm is poised menacingly above an imaginary collaged urban-scape and rendered with harsh colours and process dots, like the cover to some non-existent dystopian sci-fi novel.

David Berezan was born and educated in Canada, but studied with Jonty Harrison in Birmingham and is now an established electroacoustic Director at Manchester University. La face cachée (IMED 0896) refers to aspects of his semi-mystical working method, whereby he hopes to reveal “hidden spaces” through his tape-assemblage, thus arriving at the profound revelations of self-discovery.

Venant à la suite du projet Montreal Sound Matter / Montréal matière sonore (une installation et un disque, en 2006), le projet [Victoriaville matière sonore] reprend l’idée de composer collectivement (mais l’un après l’autre) une espèce de cadavre exquis technologique en utilisant des enregistrements de terrain (le terrain étant ici Victoriaville). Les sons recueillis sont triturés à l’extrême, avec tous les bidouillages imaginables, et le résultat est une tapisserie sonore pas du tout monochrome, mais passant plutôt en dents de scie de la transe au bruitisme et du réalisme à l’abstraction. Enregistré en concert au 24^e FIMAV en 2007; avec Chantal Dumas, a_dontigny, Steve Heimbecker, Louis Dufort, Mathieu Lévesque, Hélène Prévost, Tomas Phillips et Francisco López.

The Sound Junction 2009 event will take place on June 5-6, 2009 at the University of Sheffield (UK) with special guest: François Bayle, who will give a concert on June 5. Also scheduled, a premiere by Robert Dow and works by Hans Tutschku, Adrian Moore, Erdem Helvacıoğlu, Christian Zanési, and Peter Batchelor.

Theresa Transistor (Christian Bouchard, Christian Calon, Mario Gauthier, Monique Jean) will participate to the first concert of a series called Je me souviens (2) on April 2, 2009 at La Sala Rossa (Montréal). This series is a tribute to Québec electronic music pionneers. This frist concert is dedicated to István Anhalt.