Reviewing compilations is just something I don’t like very much. Not in the limited space each release gets within Vital Weekly. Perhaps one could write lengthy essays about various compilations, and this would perhaps be one. ZKM stands for Zentrum fur Kunst & Technology in Karlsruhe, a prestigious art and music centre. They invited a bunch of Canadian composers “to feature the outstanding creativity of Canadian electroacoustic music and to investigate the trends of its acoustmatics and soundscape composition.” We come across here some old masters like Francis Dhomont (who has a very nice piece based on spoken text of Franz Kafka), Robert Normandeau and Hildegard Westerkamp, along with pieces by Nicolas Bernier (the young man in this lot I believe), Darren Copeland, Louis Dufort, Gilles Gobeil and Barry Truax. The shortest piece(s) are around fifteen minutes, the longest almost thirty-five. Various deal with voices in German or in general. All presented on a DVD. So far the basics. The music is probably just about anything you would expect from an empreintes DIGITALes release. Heavily computer processed electroacoustics sounds. Time stretching, granular synthesis and such like. Sounds tumbling over each other, rolling in and out, nearby and far away. The best pieces are those which add something extra, like spoken word. The spoken words of Burroughs in Bernier’s piece, the Dufort piece or the aforementioned Dhomont piece. The Copeland piece is a a bit too long for me. It’s a long compilation, which has some great music, but also no real stand out pieces, I think. Surely nice enough.

Every year, the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC) holds a competition for emerging sound artists called Jeu de temps / Time’s Play. Works selected are culled on a CD (among other benefits). I recently received the 2007 and 2008 editions of Cache, said series of CDs. I like these compilations, there’s always gems to be found among those little-known names (out of 2007 crop, I recognize only Olivier Girouard and James Duhamel; from Cache 2008, only Thierry Gauthier, and that’s because he’s been featured on previous installments). It’s not all great or particularly original music (in many cases, we’re knee deep into academic electroacoustics), but gems there are. Like Duhamel’s MIMIK and Dominic Thibault’s Nuit noire, nuit grise, or even Jean-François Blouin’s Catacombes (despite the obvious influence of Gilles Gobeil). These CDs sell for cheap, and you can listen to all tracks on the CEC website.

Max & Moritz enden erst zum Schluss in der Schrotmühle und im Gänsemagen, a_dontigny & Michel F Côté stürzen sich gleich mit den ersten Klängen von La notte fa (&05) selbst in einen Häcksler aus Tapes, Electronics, digitalem Signalprozessing, vor allem aber a_dontignys Cut-ups. Die spucken nicht nur Côtés Drumming und die von a_dontigny eingesetzten Drum-Machine-Beats verhackstückt wieder aus, sie spucken auch mit — unkenntlichen — Fetzen und Brocken von Don Cherry, dem Mahavishnu Orchestra, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Maurice Ravel, Les Poules oder dem Soundtrack von Cronenbergs Videodrome um sich. In unterschiedlichen Kreisbahnen und Tempi wirbeln Klangfetzen als ein Mahlstrom, der einen selbst wie Treibgut zu erfassen droht, weil einem zunehmend schwindlig wird und man von giftigen, spitzen Rotationen gepiesackt das Gleichgewicht verliert. Die Welt ist ein hektischer, lärmiger Schlund, in dem rhythmische Kleinstteile umeinander loopen, ein gurgelnder, zwitschernder Abfluss, der alles in Reichweite schluckt. Frickeliger Drum’n’Bass ist im Vergleich dazu gemütlich ambient. Hier geht es noisiger zu, molekularer, mulmiger. Côtés Trio Klaxon Gueule geht schon in diese technoide, posthumane Stilrichtung, die Ego und Handschrift verwischt wie ein Gesicht im Sand. Identität bekommt etwas Geisterhaftes und Nostalgisches, wie Cherrys Trompete bei visiones nocturnae. Was da wie eine Parade von Nähmaschinen im Regen klingt, verbindet nichts mehr, nicht einmal surreale Zufallsbekanntschaften. Es wirkt wie pure Aktivität wild gewordener Automaten. Mehrfach besetzt Côté mit furiosem oder sturem Drumming das Zentrum, aber ohne Bindekraft, eher scheint er so die Fliehkräfte noch zu steigern. Ich sage das nicht kritisch. Das ist realistische und zeitgemäße Musik mit zeitgemäßen Titeln wie The Book Burner. Nur ich, ich war noch nie Realist, und zeitgemäß will auch ich immer weniger sein.

Wow, this is one fun, dirty collaboration between drummer/noisician Michel F. Côté and sampling artist a_dontigny (Aimé Dontigny of morceaux_de_machines). Explosions of drums, limping pieces, decontextualized audio quotes, irreverential games. It’s driving, intriguing, it’s trying to be ugly but it ain’t! Nice sonic work, nice energy, nice way to sound sloppy yet under control. Kudos! And La Notte Fa is totally in line with Côté’s latest recording projects, namely (juste) Claudette and Vulgarités, his duo with Isaiah Ceccarelli.

No doubt this label is in a lucky situation: the only mail arriving today where these two CDs, which included the 2008 release by Michel F Côté and a_dontigny, which is well beyond the six months that I usually have for accepting promo’s. This to avoid labels sending me complete back catalogues, and not because of being lazy. We know Et Records as a label from Canada with improvised music, but these two stretch the idea thereof. a_dontigny we know as someone from the No Type Records label with some highly charged musique concrete cut up music, whereas Michel F Côté is a known as an improviser on drums. That’s what he is playing here too, along with percussion, micros, tapes and electronics, and a_dontigny gets credit for cut-ups, drum machines and dsp. A bunch of (un-)invited guests also appear: Bernard Falaise, Alexandre St-Onge, Alexander MacSween and Jean René. I am not entirely sure how this was conceived, but I think this is the result of recording together some long night on drums and electronics, and then taking the recordings to the computer to effectively and extending mixing, chopping up, editing to create some wicked, crazy music. Hardly to be recognized as improvised music as such, this owes much more electronic music on one side and free rock on the other. Say Moha! or Rock Out but then a bit softer, a bit more structured and perhaps more electronic in their approach. Its however not an album that we can apply such words as ‘careful’ or ‘gentle’, as the music is a bit too mean for that. A high energy trip all around. Each track is in full speed mode, with tons of small sounds happening all around. One that doesn’t leave you untouched. One crazy fucked up form of improvised music.

The second release is by Philippe Lauzier on saxophones, bass clarinet, tubes and melodica together with Pierre-Yves Martel on prepared viola da gamba, two inch speakers, radios and contact mics. I assume, seeing this was recorded over a two day period, that this is a studio recording, which was later mixed by the two musicians, along with Dave Bignell. Improvised music of course, but quite an odd one. The nine pieces are relatively short and in a strange sort of way quite noisy. Strange because the bigger part the music is acoustically made, but with that bit of amplification that makes all the scraping sounds wandering off every now and then in the realms of feedback like sustained sounds, this is certainly not an easy work to access. Its however one, I think, that is quite beautiful. The sustaining sounds produced by what seem to be the main instruments (saxophone and viola) are already quite nasty, but in addition to whatever they are doing, this is a great work, totally demanding full concentration of the listener, but also totally rewarding. Excellent discs, both of them.