empreintes DIGITALes, étiquette montréalaise spécialisée dans les musiques électroniques et électroacoustiques entreprend cet automne des fouilles dans l’œuvre surprenante du compositeur canadien Paul Dolden. Voilà d’un coup ces trois CDs d’œuvres datant de 1984 à 1996, «entièrement retraitées, remixées et remasterisées par le compositeur en 2001-02». La musique de Dolden est caractérisée par l’utilisation de centaines d’enregistrements instrumentaux et vocaux combinés en couches multiples. En matière de musique acousmatique, son œuvre est singulière puisque l’utilisation de sources instrumentales s’adjoint à un sens aigu de l’orchestration et place la musique aux antipodes des «musiques de bruits» que suggère souvent l’acousmatique. On pourrait peut-être parler d’une approche symphonico-numérique où Stravinsky et Xenakis reviennent en écho, machinés dans une hybridation maximale des styles. Les œuvres mixtes du compositeur (avec François Houle à la clarinette et Peggy Lee au violoncelle, entre autres) font particulièrement preuve de sa sensibilité musicale et nous entraînent dans des moments d’intensité incroyables. Ce petit survol de l’œuvre de Dolden démontre admirablement la singularité de son langage (et son importance) qui, tout en s’approchant d’un discours symphonique radicalisé, ouvre la porte aux influences du jazz, du rock et des diverses possibilités venues de l’électrification et de la capture du son. Une œuvre à découvrir d’urgence.

Electroacoustic music fans will be thrilled to know that these two new releases featuring the work of Paul Dolden and Roxanne Turcotte are extremely high quality in praduction values, generous in duration, wide-ranging in styles, thought provoking in musicality, and well, just plain great!

As Dolden and Turcotte’s compositional styles are as different, to my ears anyway, as apples and oranges, comparisons cannot really be justified. As the liner notes describe, Dolden’s music is “the missing link between jazz and rock and the high-brow concert tradition” while Turcotte’s musical approach rests on a film-like art of integration.

Paul Dolden’s release contains three works from the composer’s output from the mid to late 1980s and two works from 1996. Most impressive is how Dolden can manipulate a wall of sound to create musical juxtapositions, especially in the opening track, Below the Walls of Jericho (1988-89). My pick, however, has to be The Vertigo of Ritualised Frenzy, Resonance #4 (1996). For tape, with Francois Houle on clarinet and Leslie Wyber on piano, this is a rocking, thumping, virtuosic display of streetsmarts, intellect and psyche. Timeless.

Most of the works featured on Roxanne Turcotte’s CD are more recent. A more introspective nature and thus compositional style is evident here. She also displays a quiet wit in Y---OW (1985, 2002). The telephone and its users play a starring role in this version of a work which the liner notes explain was put together from 22 tapes of the multimedia work of the same name. Turcotte is described also as a sound designer and nowhere is this more evident than in the title track Libellune (1999-2002). A glorious and reflective work for ethnic wind instruments (as performed by Michel Dubeau) and tape, aural imageries are created effortlessly by Turcotte’s exact sense of movement and timing.

But once again, the music is great. Both first-time and seasoned electroacoustic listeners are well advised to check out both discs.

Four long electronic improv tracks from this Montréal duo, each with an established pedigree in avant performance: this CD is a recording of a concert that took place at Casa del Popolo in April 2002. There is not a musical instrument in sight: Dontigny manipulates a computer, while Labrosse uses a sampler. The result is a stew of noise, at times oppressive, at others subdued — a powerful and ever shifting web of sound and texture. Ever inventive, the glitchy first track t.s.f. is for me the best of the bunch, with snatches of classical music put through an industrial washing machine on fast cycle. There seems to be a lot of decent music coming out of Canada. Here’s some more of it.

Loyal readers of the Alternative Press will recognize Books on Tape as one of the season’s musicians to watch, and Sings the Blues seconds the suggestion that this is one of the most criminally under-appreciated acts in Los Angeles. It always sounds stupidly elitist to say so, but Books on Tape — who is Todd Drootin, alone — may just be too clever and too difficult for popular acceptance. One immediately thinks of the limitations of a one-man-band with no vocals, although the adaptability of the sampler is Drootin’s platform. Recorded sound is only going to take a musician so far without the knowledge and imagination to sculpt the sound, and Books on Tape creates a tactile musical collage in every track on this, Drootin’s second LP. Kind of like a versatile mix of Prefuse 73 and Aphex Twin, Books on Tape explores everything from electro to samba to jungle to punk rock to avant funk. The music on this album just doesn’t sit still, as every sustained groove is punctuated by near-complete unpredictability in the form of synthesized sound breaks, noise, static, and complex, creative percussion arrangements. Listen to this hour-plus album build in intensity as it plays, rarely failing to surprise and to enchant. Top notch.