“… are you coming yet… are your nipples erect… ” perhaps not… but your ears are certainly in for an amusing treat. This short passage of telephone sex from «… Ceci est un message enregistré…» is one of many snatches of sonic graffitti that litter the sound world of Marc Tremblay. For Tremblay “Noise is the child of chaos. It confronts us daily and can come to symbolise all that is accidental in life… l Iove to discover the poetry in the noise that surrounds us.”
All six works on this disk seek to explore the poetic quality of everyday noise in its various guises. On the surface these works appear to be light-hearted, even flippant, imbued with a real sense of ironic amusement. Beneath this surface however, there is a darker side, one which utilises many of the anecdotal materials to provide social comment — Cowboy Fiction (1998) exposes the imperialistic mentality of ‘the White man’, «… Ceci est un message enregistré…» (1994) — the way in which technology, though allowing us to communicate faster and quicker, can actually heighten our sense of physical insularity, and L’argent… toujours l’argent! (1990), our voyeristic love of gameshows that allow contestants get rich quick.
Vroum which opens the disk is a homage to the automobile replete with samples from The Beatles to Formula One. The piece’s gestural energy is contained in noise based samples derived from various car parts while more pitched elements are derived from car horns. Though this is a substantial piece, at fifteen minutes it seems a little long. This is due in part to the long drawn out central section based predominately on a sequenced car horn could have been shorter to keep up both the spectral and the gestural from the opening. Nevertheless, this opening piece gives you a taste of what is in store for later.
In contrast to the two extended opening works Vroum and Conte sous la lune — celebrating the naivety of childhood, Résidus (clip dadaïste) (1995) is the shortest piece on the disk and is an ironic evocation of Duchamp’s Fontaine. Résidus (clip dadaïste) must lay claim to be the first electroacoustic work to include a sonic vomit. Tremblay considers this piece “a small variation on the sounds that we hear — but do not really hear — in washrooms.” This is a real cinema for the ears piece which is nothing if not graphic!
Cowboy Fiction (1998) although in the same amusing cinematic vein of the other pieces is the only one actually acknowledged as being part of a larger multimedia project. It forms the second part of an on-going project entitled Rêve de cowboy. The sonic material for the piece comes from the sound tracks to the French version of Howard Hawks’ El Dorado, John Ford’s The Searchers, and a version of Hank Williams’ Rambling Man with a few locomotives and gun shots thrown in for good measure. For me this is the strongest piece on the disk.
Tremblay’s world is a crafted in-your-face melange of sonic debris, that engage in an amusing but ironic commentary on the noises that surround us. I had great fun listening to this disk and laughed out loud on numerous occasions. There are few electroacoustic composers that are able to combine craftsmanship with ironic humour as Tremblay does so effortlessly. Enjoy.
