After suffering through some other artists’ musical mediocrity, I equip myself for another empreintes DIGITALes experience. I’m immediately spooked by the opening track Hérésie ou les bas-reliefs du dogme, which has a roaring, jet-engine quality about it. With a barrage of aural effects entering and exiting the speakers, Tremblay does not hesitate to let loose on a stimulus overload, as this 20 minute piece shakes, shudders and roars, and then quietly diminishes, becoming a brooding animal (which I’m sure will charge out when I least expect it). Tremblay does not trip up after his opening piece, as Oaristys interjects keyboard strikes, tribal drumming interludes and more engimatic thought processes, which are hauntingly disturbing, yet cunningly engimatic, piquing your curiosity and keeping your attention. Tremblay enjoys sampling human voices and then slicing them into disjointed parts, like a mad French chef letting loose on his gamey-entree of the evening. By all means engaging, Tremblay’s own warped auditory explorations will leave you undoubtedly enlightened, but also spent and tired due to their forceful intrusions into your own soul. Beware, for Tremblay means business, and once Alibi slides into your CD player you can expect a swift transformation of your stereo system into some sort of strange stereophonic surgical tool which will inspect, probe and alter your human senses.

Aérosol by Ned Bouhalassa is rich in highly crafted sounds which are humorous, yet enticing, and always fully aware. Ned Bouhalassa demonstrates on Aérosol his mastery at creating strange and flowing pieces that interconnect with each other flawlessly. I believe that anyone who is slightly interested in strange music should own this disk.

Darren Copeland works with natural environmental atmospheres along the same lines as Hildegard Westerkamp only his work tends to be much grittier. Copeland’s Rendu visible is an interesting ride which surrounds the listener with an imaginative reconstruction of environmental sounds. I place it highly among some of my favorites in its genre.

Miniatures concrètes was released in 1998 as a celebration of 50 years of musique concrète. It is a compilation of 24 short works by composers from around the Western world. These works range from glorious pops and squeaks to luscious textures all exquisitely captured with a crisp preciseness. I highly recommend this disk for anyone who seeks unusual music. It is a fantastic introduction to some of the artists on empreintes DIGITALes.

Ned Bouhalassa is in a sense part of the third generation of Montréal electroacoustic composers. Unlike the work of the scene’s patriarch, Francis Dhomont, which is very much in the style of ‘old school’ acousmatic composers like Bayle and Chion, or the work of ‘second’ generation composers like Robert Normandeau and Gilles Gobeil (for example), which strives to apply new ‘sound palettes’ to acousmatic ideals, Bouhalassa allows clear and unadulterated influences from more commercially viable music to enter his compositions.

A great example of this is Jets, where relatively orthodox acousmatically-treated material alternates with what could easily pass for ‘chill out’ music in any dance club. If you like the idea of “acousmatisme” but find it occasionally too stuffy, Bouhalassa might be your man!