electrocd

A Creating Fringe Keeps Electronic Music Alive and Compelling

Arthur Kaptainis, The Gazette, May 12, 1990

Robert Normandeau will make a better impression on listeners who prefer (or demand) the lucidity and linearity of good non-electronic music.

Not that allusion is lacking: Ligeti-like choral clusters, church bells, trains and slot machines all make appearances in Jeu, the longest work. Yet there is real forward momentum, and the result is nomadic in the good sense.

Also impressive is Memoires vives, a 16-minute requiem of haunting echoes set in a vast cathedral space. This is serious music.

Normandeau’s aims in Rumeurs are more impudent, but even this miscellany of loon ealls, door slams, bush fires and flushing toilets manages not to bore.