Encore une fois, je m’excuse pour l’emploi de ce terme générique que plusieurs compositeurs utilisant autre chose que des instruments réfutent ou transforment. Je compte sur leur tolérance pour la non-uniformité du vocabulaire.

C’est la maison empreintes DIGITALes qui mène encore le bal, avec son producteur Jean-François Denis qui, lui, n’a pas froid aux yeux. Une bonne quinzaine de titres à paraître. Des compositeurs d’Europe, notamment Michèle Bokanowski et Hildegard Westerkamp (dont j’attends avec frénésie les résultats de son «écologie sonore»), et, choses à suivre tant par les adeptes que les curieux et les sceptiques, un disque consacré à des œuvres du Montréalais Stéphane Roy et un autre d’un de ses maîtres — un maître en soi —, la réédition sur CD de Sous le regard d’un soleil noir de Francis Dhomont. Entre parenthèses, il paraîtrait qu’une suite à cette œuvre soit en phase de réalisation et qu’on puisse l’éditer vers la fin de l’année. Rêvons et envoyons plein de «vibrations positives» au compositeur.

Martin Tétreault is a French Canadian from Montréal who performs with turntables. In London for LMC New Aura concert, he explained to Philip Tagney and Ed Baxter that he doesn’t have a sampler, but he does have a record called How To Train Your Dog.

Resonance: Can you tell us something about your background?

Martin Tétreault: First of all I was in fine art. I was involved in a conceptual approach, and I was cutting up paper. One day, I decided to cut up something else. I took a record, cut it into to slices, fixed side A with side B together with tape, put it onto record pickups and it worked. It all started from that.

R: So you had no formal music training, and you weren’t aware of other people experimenting with records?

MT: No, I did it alone. This was in 1984. Five years later someone asked me to collaborate in the Broken Music exhibition, and make a performance with Christian Marclay. Then I realised that some others had done the same as me, but I hadn’t known about them.

R: What are the aesthetic implications of what you are doing?

MT: I think right now I am changing. The work I did until now was mostly based on quotation, you know, taking a little part and adding it to another. I’m still doing that, but now I’m playing more with the physical, with the record itself, the noise it can produce. All the possibilities of the record itself, not only the music, but the object. You can cut it, splice it, scratch it, erase it, put paper on it, and so on.

R: Tell us something about your New Aura performance tonight.

MT: I’ve brought a lot of old turntables from Montréal. Some of them are called Calliphone, this was the turntable found in every school when I was a kid. Each turntable has its own possibilities and its own sound. I also have a Thecnics turntable—a friend of mine put a switch on it so I can play reverse and forwards at 100 rpm. And I use a balloon which I put around the tone-arm: I call it “frottophone”, and it creates a friction between the balloon and the record—it’s very funny to do it! I have some spoken word records, in Montréal I have a collection of maybe 200: How to Train Your Dog, How To Dance Disco, How To Save Your Life…

R: Do you see a problem maintaining an individual quality in the music you’re making? David Shea remarked that if you have too many elements in the sound, then it becomes a kind of continuum again. Do you think there’s an optimum level between not having enough material and using too much material?

MT: Too much material is dangerous. I realised that some weeks ago, because I buy a lot of records and I don’t have time to listen to them. After a show someone came up to me and said “Hey, you used a Bartok String Quartet”. I said that I didn’t know, because I don’t use the music because of who wrote it, but for the music itself. I have a selection of electronic music, drumming, guitar music, so when I want to make a cut I say OK, I’ll take a bit of electronic… this is a way I can build music.

R: So it’s like orchestration?

MT: Yes. And I can reproduce that many times. It’s not only improvisation. I make a mark on the record—I learned that in Bruire, a band that I play with in Montréal. Every night I had to play the same cut, it’s this record, at this place, at this moment, at this speed. It can be very precise. It’s like sampling, but it’s mechanical sampling. Someone asked me, “Why don’t you use a sampler?” I answered, “It’s not old enough. ” When no one is interested in samplers any more, that’s when I’ll use them!

R: Why? What’s the attraction of old technology?

MT: Mechanics! I’ve found new ways to use turntables, just through mechanics, varispeed and so on. I’m not yet ready to explore samplers. But I did some collaborations with electroacoustic musicians, and there’s a good balance, because their sounds are very real and clutured while with me it’s more Art brut. So if you put those things together… I’mvery interested in the larger scale—every sound has its own quality. There’s no sound better than another—it’s how, where, and why you use it.

R: I’m interested that you reject samplers. Essentially you’re interested in an end result, and its seems to me you could get the same result from samplers or CDs.

MT: For me the samplers is too much “itself”. You know the origin of the sound,and if I play this sound it will be this sound. But when I put on a record and I make a wrong move — whoops! — the needle skips and I have to play with that.

R: So does your music mostly depend on spontaneity?

MT: Yes, a part of it does. I prepare a road, and I have a place where I start, a place where I stop, and a place where I ask myself “Where am I going?” And the result is what we call the show.

Parmi les parutions québécoises de ces dernières années en musique électroacoustique, le disque de Gilles Gobeil fait figure d’exception. Chacune de ses œuvres est d’une densité expressive résumant, pourrait-on croire, des années de réflexion et de travail minutieux. Peu de créateurs dans le monde de l’électro ont une vision aussi nette de ce qu’ils veulent réaliser, et encore moins réussissent à l’exprimer avec une telle efficacité. Il s’agit ici, permettez-moi d’appuyer, de véritable musique, et non point d’une suite d’anecdotes révélant les instincts ludiques de l’auteur. Gobeil compose, s’exprime, et nous rejoint. À suivre…

AVIS: Le texte reproduit ici est extrait du site de Voir et est protégé par la Loi sur le droit d’auteur du Canada. © Communications Voir Inc, 1995

Lieux inouïs (Unheard-of Places) by Québécois composer Robert Normandeau reminds us of Neil B Rolnick’s Sanctus from Bridge Records [PNMR Vol. 1, 5]. Working with completely different aesthetics, two composers with nothing in common have coincidentally created similar sounds from classical sacred music. Like a lot of French Canadian music, the Normandeau CD is narrative; almost programmatic, following a natural and extremely sophisticated progression. And like a lot of American music, the Rolnick CD is abstract, occasionally funny, and mostly non-linear. But Rolnick pales in comparison compositionally, and surprisingly enough, technically. Both composers use tape samples (analog, not digital) of classical music. In Normandeau’s disc. the cited music is mixed with environmental sound, much of it readily identifiable. For instance, Jeu (Game), an electronic tour de force, uses a mélange of nostalgic references to Paris (sounds of the Metro, ÀOrly airport, construction noise) and organ anf choral music. As the listener is swirled into the inexorable movement of the piece, the places (lieux) become almost miraculously tangible. Impressive and intriguing.

Robert Normandeau vient de décrocher le premier prix du Concours international Musica Nova 95 à Prague pour Spleen, une œuvre pour bande magnétique remontant à 1993 qui figure sur le CD Tangram (empreintes DIGITALes). La même composition lui valait l’année dernière le Prix du public au 3^e Concours international Noroît-Léonce Petiot à Arras, en France.