Sounds Found and Fixed, a weekend of electroacoustic music, will be held at the Reid Concert Hall, Edinburg (UK), from February 1 to 3, 2002. Composer Jonty Harrison will be featured on Saturday, as he will be presenting works by Denis Smalley, Christian Calon and Natasha Barrett, as well as his.

On January 30, 1990, empreintes DIGITALes began its public activities with the launch of its very first CD (by composer Christian Calon). Twelve years later, we start this new year with 65 titles in our catalog, 76 composers on our label and a total of 344 electroacoustic compositions to listen “into.” To celebrate this anniversary, we are making a special offer to all our Internet customers: a 12% rebate for 12 days on all empreintes DIGITALes titles! That’s right! Now you too can celebrate with us: from Wednesday January 30 until Monday February 11. 2001 a 12% discount is being offered on any empreintes DIGITALes disc ordered from the electrocd.com website. Internationally renowned for the exceptionnal quality of its electroacoustic releases, empreintes DIGITALes continues to offer music to listen “into,” and now more than ever before!

The Transparent Tape Music Festival will be held in Berkeley (USA) on January 11 and 12, 2002. In conjunction with the Transparent Theater and the ACME Observatory, The New San Francisco Tape Music Center will present a total of 17 works, diffused on a 16-loudspeaker system designed for this event. Compositions by Javier Álvarez, Yves Daoust, John Oswald, Hildegard Westerkamp, and Denis Smalley — released by empreintes DIGITALes — are amongst the programmed works.

Of all avant-garde music artists, electroacoustic composers may be the ones having the most difficulty to reach an audience. Labels dedicated to this style are few and often tied to academic institutions that limit their accessibility. That’s why empreintes DIGITALes can be considered as a success. Since its inception in 1989, this independent label has become an international reference in electroacoustics, building an impressive catalog that encompasses the best living composers from Canada, the USA, France, England, and abroad.

In 1989, Jean-François Denis and Claude Schryer founded DIFFUSION i MéDIA, a production company based in Montréal and dedicated to tape music. An imprint was created: empreintes DIGITALes (a second one, SONARt, dedicated to sound art projects, also saw the light of day but only a few titles were issued in the early 1990s). The first albums to be released were Christian Calon’s Ligne de vie: récits électriques and Robert Normandeau’s Lieux inouïs, in January 1990. Both quickly became respected composers, the latter one of the label’s most prolific and best-selling artists.

The first releases focused on Quebec artists, but in 1991 the label issued the 2-CD set Mouvances~Métaphores (reissued in 1996 as two separated CDs: Cycle de l’errance and Les dérives du signe), a mammoth retrospective of French legend Francis Dhomont, another best-selling artist. From this point on, the label rallied composers revolving around the Groupe de recherches musicales in Paris, the BEAST in the UK (a research group led by Jonty Harrison), and the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. Other important contributors would include Michel Chion, Yves Daoust, Paul Dolden, Gilles Gobeil, Denis Smalley, and Annette Vande Gorne.

Schryer soon left the company to concentrate on his career as a composer. Denis continued to direct the label and also founded Réseaux, an association devoted to presenting tape music concerts, while establishing a strong relationship with kindred label Ambiances Magnétiques (in the early 2000s, both shared the same premices and web design).

In the mid-’90s, empreintes DIGITALes launched “Compact-Compact,” a series of half-priced CDs containing under one hour of music. It targeted newcomers to the genre. Throughout the years the label pioneered original CD box designs. The OPAK box, which allowed room for a thick booklet with extensive liner notes, was introduced in 1996, but was dropped in 2000 in favor of a slimmer cardboard design. These unique graphic signatures were instrumental to the label’s recognition.

empreintes DIGITALes est le fer de lance de la musique électroacoustique au sens où Metamkine pourrait la définir. Dirigé par Jean-François Denis, il est partagé avec SONARt qui lui distingue davantage les créations instrumentales de studio. Chez empreintes DIGITALes, le radicalisme esthétique est une constante, plaçant d’emblée les productions du label au rang d’objet d’art. Un soin apporté aux pochettes et aux disques, qui sonne comme un engagement quasi éthique, si ce n’est idéologique. Toute cette génération de curieux trouve à présent un réel épanouissement, mûrissement de quelques années de pratiques laborieuses, de doutes successifs, dans le jeu de la construction de leur univers respectif. On peut ajouter l’influence de l’école française concrète (Schaeffer) référence évidente et revendiquée, notamment par Jonty Harrison, même s’ils s’inscrivent en réaction à l’académisme, à l’hermétisme et à la doctrine de la technique. Ces auteurs ont le mérite de considérer l’époque pour elle-même et non à travers des mythologies douteuses ou fantasmées.

Les mélomanes férus de musique électroacoustique sont bien servis cette année grâce aux maisons d’éditions YMX MéDIA et YUL MéDIA, lesquelles ont édité plusieurs œuvres des compositeurs canadiens Robert Normandeau, Daniel Leduc, Randall Smith, Marc Tremblay et Louis Dufort. Les créateurs étrangers ne sont pas en reste, les œuvres du Français Kristoff K.Roll et de l’Allemand Hans Tutschku venant compléter cette liste déja fort bien remplie. À noter que l’ensemble des ces créations ont été gravées grâce à l’expertise de la maison de disques empreintes DIGITALes, de Montréal.