Robert Normandeau travaille présentement à la composition d’une musique de scène pour la pièce L’Éden cinéma de Marguerite Duras, mise en scène de Brigitte Haentjens et qui sera créée à Ottawa au Centre national des arts le 13 mai 2003. La pièce sera ensuite reprise à Montréal pendant le Festival de théâtre des Amériques (FTA). Parallèlement à cette musique de scène, Normandeau compose une musique de concert, nommée Éden, qui sera créée à Marseille le 12 mai 2003. Il s’agit d’une commande du Groupe de musique expérimentale de Marseille (GMEM).

Les 4 et 5 juin 2003, Chants libres présentera, en reprise à Montréal, l’«électr’opéra» L’enfant des glaces de Zack Settel avec Pauline Vaillancourt et Jean Maheux.

20 artistes 72.15 min, c’est ce que vous propose la petite étiquette électronique Déluge avec cette compilation d’artistes originaires de la ville de Québec. Une multitude de genres et d’attitudes, parfaite pour la saison estivale!

Magali Babin se fraye un chemin à travers la matière grise. Matière froide, sans âme, elle tente de lui donner vie. D’une lame en acier trempé à un couvercle de casserole, Magali Babin explore tous les alliages du métal. Fonte de l’enregistrement. Elle forge les sons. Torsion, martèlement, étirement, soudure, cisaillement. Les voix se multiplient et bientôt se perdent dans la grisaille d’une pluie de limaille de fer. Corrosion. Le rythme s’oxyde progressivement. Les enregistrements (tels des photographies) sont punaisés au mur en guise de souvenir. Estompage de la mémoire. Grattage de la surface rouillée pour lui redonner son éclat. Donne à réfléchir.

Diane Labrosse takes pleasure in absurdity, harmony, dissonance, structure and improvisation. Her fascination with unconventional sounds has led her to digital sampling, to which she brings a hard-core approach. For the last fifteen years she has regularly appeared on contemporary, improvised and avant-garde music stages both in Canada and in Europe. Some of her projects are done with Île bizarre (Ikue Mori & Martin Tétreault), L’Oreille à vincent with Christof Migone, Michel F Côté, Martin Tétreault and sound sculptor Jean-Pierre Gauthier.

A self-taught composer, Aimé Dontigny is one of the founding members of the “free-noise” collective Napalm Jazz and of the electronic duo morceaux_de_machines. Dontigny has been working for empreintes DIGITALes and Ambiances Magnétiques. He devotes himself eagerly to the challenges of improvised music and is particularly interested in the development of new electronic music in Canada. His compositions are full of subtle quotes and his sonic palette adapts itself to many aesthetics, as reflected in his recent collaborations with Diane Labrosse

This collaboration is found on Télépathie a new release by No Type records. It is an intense listen, with a loud blend of sounds, movement and ambience. Recorded live on April 20th, 2002 this release captures the direct approach of their unique improvisations. Télépathie is a must for fans of noise, collage, explosions and just plain weird stuff. It definitely pushes the boundaries in music, composition, writing methods and approaches.

After a couple of years of building up an impressive catalog of MP3 and CD-R releases, Todd Drootin of Books on Tape has really pulled out the stops for his first official full-length album. Recording live in the studio to 24-track tape using a set-up based almost exclusively around oid school sound gear, and inviting in a slew of guests including Kerri Kirchheimer on drums and his sister Stefanie Drootin of Bright Eyes on keyboard and vocals, Drootin has put together an exciting and dynamic set that wonderfully meshes his punk and indie-rock roots with his current proclivities for knob twiddling and key pressing.

The material on Throw Down Your Laptops sounds unlike pretty much any other record I’ve heard in quite some time, which is an achievement in a genre that is strewn with so many sound-alikes. Drootin throws down a strong base of thick electro melodies and beefy beats that range from downtempo cool to a jackhammer frenzy. These elements are often left alone to happily co-mingle, but Drootin is also generous with his guests, allowing them to have a strong influence, especially on tracks like The Contenders, a short but sweet collaboration with electro-noise-rock trio Rose For Bohdan. So while Throw Down Your Laptops may not be a record that will change your life, you can at least be guaranteed that it won’t sound like anything else in your collection, and when it comes to today’s electronic music scene, that’s really saying something.