Le Son a des jambes — présentée du 1^er mai au 1^er juin 2008 à la SAT, à Montréal — est une exposition qui présente des structures sonores et des documents visuels de Sonde, groupe interdisciplinaire actif principalement de 1976 à 86. En résonance avec ce matériel d’archives, Nathan McNinch, jeune compositeur originaire de Kingston (Ontario) dévoile sa première installation sonore (commissaire Éric Mattson).

Le vendredi 2 mai 2008, Dr Ox (Natasha Barrett, portable; Tanja Orning, violoncelle) sera en concert au Domkirken, à Bergen (Norvège); et le samedi 3 mai au Sagene Kulturverksted, à Oslo. Leur nouveau CD DR.OX sera bientôt disponible sur electrocd.com.

Andrew Lewis sera en concert le 22 mai 2008 à la School of Arts and New Media de la University of Hull, à Scarborough (Angleterre, Royaume-Uni). Il y diffusera notamment sa pièce Danses acousmatiques qui figure sur Miroirs obscurs. Une conférence précède le concert. De plus, sa pièce Budo Variations sera interprétée par le duo Contour le 11 juin au Elisabeth-Schneider-Stiftung, à Fribourg-en-Brisgau (Allemagne).

Le 6 mai 2008, Zack Settel donnera une formation sur les approches innovatrices de création qui rendent possible la superposition d’environnements 3D virtuels aux espaces physiques réels. C’est à la SAT, à Montréal.

La nouvelle œuvre radiophonique The Other Night, Underwater de Darren Copeland et Andreas Kahre sera diffusée le vendredi 2 mai 2008 à minuit — heure de Berlin (Allemagne) — sur les ondes de la Deutschlandradio Kultur (ou le jeudi 1^er mai à 18h, heure de Montréal). La pièce ne sera pas archivée sur Internet, ce sera donc la seule occasion de l’entendre!

It took me a while to review this DVD, but as you can imagine it’s one of those releases you need to “understand” and that needs to be listened to really carefully and ma’am, I swear I did it! Don’t misinterpret me thinking it’s too weird, for even those who are not deeply into contemporary music and into modern electronic compositions can give it a listen quite easily. In some way the music is really close to some ambient pieces, but that’s quite obvious since ambient music has its origin right there in modern classical music. The first composition Ombres espace, silence (2005) offers four movements, the opening is quite soft and evocative and I’d add relaxing, but it’s right with the second section of the work the “musique concrète” nature of the effort really makes the difference with the average and becomes explicit: sudden and unexpected sounds will make your heart stop while you were waiting for a gradual tension-building, the third “act” of this “drama” is nothing but crepuscular, but Gobeil while remaining deeply suggestive closes this suite in a soft and oniric way. While the first part of the work is close to something many ambient listener my dig, with Entre les deux rives du printemps (2006) the classical training of Gobeil is much more overt; I’m probably saying something he may disagree with but even if I can’t say exactly why this one reminded me of some late compositions of Steve Reich, just brought to their extreme consequences, not necessarily odd or depressive since the music has its relaxing moments, but when Gobeil goes for creating a “hole in the scene” take for granted you won’t find ground to walk upon. Every once in a while the composer changes suddenly everything by breaking the continuity of music with some really violent and high volume explosions that made me jump on the chair while my headphones blew apart the few neurons I had left. The closing composition is not that far from the previous two in a sense you don’t have to consider this as one of those DVD featuring different works by the same composer where the style is considerably different, this Canadian composer works with a clearly distinguishable method thanks to which the music is homogenous. The sound definition is great, that’s why this label puts out such releases on DVD and obviously I suggest you to give it a try playing it in your home-theater.