electrocd

Review

François Couture, AllMusic, September 1, 2001

The center of attention on Bruits, electroacoustic composer Yves Daoust’s third CD, is undeniably the 30 minute title suite. In three movements, he manages to remain true to his anecdotal writing style while completely renewing his palette. Unsuspecting listeners could mistake the first moments of Children’s Corner for a piece of experimental noise. The charge is surprisingly ferocious but quickly defused by the use of children laughs, shouts, and games. Still the piece follows a noise esthetic the likes of which had never appeared in Daoust’s work before. The round of surprises continues in Nuit where material from the first movement is recycled into a more abstract form. Here the music follows a tangent that brings it close to experimental electronica artists working outside the academic electroacoustic sphere, such as Fennesz and Carsten Nicolai. The third movement, Fête, uses field recordings of the various summer festivals in Montréal, bringing back a human factor and Daoust’s love for the anecdote. The three other pieces comprising this set are not necessarily more typical, but they clearly pale in comparison. An earlier version of Impromptu is available on Musiques naïves. This time, the tape part computer-derived from a Chopin piece is augmented by a piano part, a keyboard part, and more children sounds. La Gamme is a rare attempt at sound synthesis. Written for the bicentennial of the French Revolution, Ouverture is an electroacoustic hörspiel putting in correlation various moments in the history of Québec. Both poetic and political in nature, it will be lost on non-French speaking listeners.