Nicolas Bernier’s passion for sound and for beautiful and intricate structures earned him a honorary mention from the Prix Ars Electronica two years ago for his debut album, Les Arbres. This record was in no way Bernier’s first foray onto the music scene, but until then, his work has mainly constituted of collaborative efforts and of installations. With three releases out in a matter of months, Bernier charts very different aspects of his electro-acoustic work.

Bernier uses a wide range of sonic sources in his work, which are often processed into fragile clusters and placed against acoustic instrumentation. In the series of recordings he has made with guitarist Simon Trottier, Bernier has absorbed elements of folk music and distorted them as to retain only the slightest traces of melody, and surrounded them with noise, interferences and field recordings. Courant.Air, published on Ahornfelder, sees the pair working together once again. Recorded over a two year period, and the result of two distinct commissioned work, this album is partly a tribute to the St. Lawrence River which has played such an important part in Canadian history and which has shaped both the landscapes it crosses and the people who depend on it. The extremely intricate and detailed soundscapes collected here occasionally contrast with Trottier’s gentle guitar work, his contribution at times left to flourish amidst stark and fragmented sound collages (Soubresauts, Petit port bien abrité, Air.Chanson.Usure, Propulsion), at others processed and assimilated into Bernier’s epic creations. There is a constant shift here between dense electro-acoustic moments and more pastoral motifs, but the pair ultimately feed from one another, allowing the music to filter through Bernier’s abstract constructions just enough to ground it firmly.

Released a couple of months before Courant.Air, Strings.Lines, issued on Portuguese imprint Crónica, is a very different project. Recorded with Pierre-Yves Martel (viola da gamba) and Chris Bartos (violin), the album is centered around Bernier’s fascination for tuning forks, which he avidly collects, and the variations in frequency they can reach. Having sourced the sounds emitted by his tuning forks, Bernier set out to process them into improvised sound formations. In a second instance, Martel and Bartos were asked to play close to a single pitch, and use the whole of their instruments, including bodies, bows and strings to build additional musical layers as a response to Bernier’s earlier work. While melodies are largely dropped in favour of the sonic aspect of the instruments, there is greater musicality to be found in the five pieces making this album, albeit in drone forms for the most part. Toward the end of Line (C) however, Bernier builds up a clearly defined rhythmic pattern, giving the piece a surprisingly conventional outline for a moment. Line (Horizon) which follows, resorts to the sombre sound forms created by the two string players, at a time combining the increasingly threatening hum of the strings and various textured field recordings into a particularly dense soundscape before leaving it to dissolve over the later part of the piece.

Bernier is sole on board for the LP-only Usure.Paysage, the most recent of the three albums, and, over the course of four tracks, two clocking at around ten to eleven minutes, the other two much shorter, he exposes the electro-acoustic nature of his work through a series of highly fragmented and contrasted sound collages, built from varied field recordings. This is in many ways the most disturbing and fascinating of the three records, its pieces building up into heavy abstract forms, cut short by far ranging noise conflagrations or infinitely small sonic particles. Each of the four pieces is made of juxtaposed sequences, with nothing to clearly link them together other than the simple fact that they exist in a pre-defined order. The impression though it that of a living scenery, subjected to random events, and reacting or adapting to them. Bernier expertly plays with the mind here, often tricking it into a false sense of safety and peace, only to drop a deep thunder or layer high pitched metal on metal friction or, it appears at one point, human screams.

Although released in quick successions, these three records stem from totally different ideas, the resulting pieces, while bearing some common elements, revealing Nicolas Bernier as a particularly inquisitive mind and creative sound artist.

L’édition 2009 du concours Jeu de temps/Time’s Play de la Communauté électroacoustique canadienne comportait un volet allemand en association avec la Deutsche Gesellschaft für Electroakustische Musik. Conséquemment, la compilation Cache 2009 (qui réunit les propositions finalistes) est un album double, un disque étant consacré aux participants canadiens et l’autre aux participants allemands. Ce n’est pas du tout par chauvinisme, mais il me semble que la sélection canadienne remporte la palme haut la main. Syncrétisme de Guillaume Barrette, Manège I de Félix Lachance et Frette de Charles Quevillon se distinguent pour la qualité de la composition et la présence d’un brin d’humour. J’attendais plus de la Suite_04 d’Olivier Girouard, plutôt longue et monotone. Du côté teuton, j’ai préféré Vertikalzeit de Nicolas Wiese. Dans l’ensemble, Cache 2009 constitue une très bonne cuvée, plus forte qu’en 2007 et 2008.

Nicolas Bernier and Martin Messier, as La Chambre des Machines, Wrest New Music from Their Russolo Inspired Sound Boxes

In 1913, Italian futurist Luigi Russolo penned the Art of Noises manifesto where he outlined important facets of music criticism and creation in the face of a young century and an industrialized society well on the verge of world war. Bringing his manifesto to fruition just one year later, Russolo introduced his intonarumori (“noise instruments”) in a series of concerts held in London”. The manifesto “rejected inherited preference for harmony in favour of the dissonant masterpieces that serenade us everyday without our conscious awareness” and instead celebrated “the crashing down of metal shop blinds, slamming doors, the hubbub and shuffling of crowds, the variety of din from stations, railways, iron foundries, spinning mills, printing works, electric power stations, and underground railways”. Usurping popular understandings of music and conventions of beauty, Russolo laid the groundwork for what we now know as noise music, often inextricably linked with electronic music. Russolo wrote; “The rhythmic motions of noise are infinite”.

Flash forward to 2010, and Nicolas Bernier explains the implications of La Chambre des Machines ’ relationship to Russolo: “We are not going to say; we are children of Russolo. But we are all, because he was more or less one of the first; he made [music] with sound, [the] sound of machines. But now today, politically speaking… we cannot really relate to that. He was in the fascist era and it was the first phase of the industrialization. There is maybe not [a] political but more a social aspect of doing what we do and it’s almost in a position of what Russolo was talking about, because he was talking about using the machine. Because the machine today is the computer, this is our machine.” The sounds that Bernier and Messier’s intonarumori are generated by software along withfound objects like gears, cranks and clocks, and tools like mallets and bows. Says Bernier, this is; “a lot more interesting than the computer.”

Going back a couple of years, Bernier enlisted long-time friend, builder and wood-worker, Alexandre Landry to create their first intonarumori. Says Bernier, “he’s not in the artistic world but in the meantime, when his day job is over he’s going to his basement and he’s super. He has a nice artistic sensibility. Basically, for the first [intonarumori] we did some back and forth. He made a first machine for a show that I did in Québec City at Mois Multi. He has carte blanche, more or less because I’m not, and Martin either, we just don’t know how to work with our hands.”

With the introduction of the second intonarumori, Martin Messier says that prior to its realization, “I had a solo performance with old clocks and [Nicolas] had [a] performance with one box.” Landry produced the second machine in a short time period as Messier and Bernier were pitching La Chambre des Machines to festivals.With the solidification of the second box and in the span of a year, Bernier and Messier performed at Mutek 2010 and at other renowned festivals including Sonar Chicago and Barcelona and Transmediale in Berlin.

There was some debate between Landry, Bernier and Messier on whether the box should be open or closed. Bernier explains, “the fundamental thing in making a new box was to have it open. When you think of the machines of Russolo and our machine with computer, the parallel is really funny. His box was already closed and we couldn’t see what’s inside. Today it’s the same thing when we go to electronic music performance[s]; there’s this box, this computer. We hear things and we don’t know how the sound is made.”

The duo describes their work as “a sound construction at the crossroads of acoustics and electronics.” Though this is the case, Bernier and Messier are also drawing on musical traditions and contemporary tools in a visionary manner that conceptually, is like the infinite reflection of mirrors upon mirrors; blending the old with the new. Bernier and Messier’s composition that is La Chambre des Machines is built upon traditions open and closed, with laptop to produce digital sound, the use of found objects, traditional music tools like the aforementioned mallet and bow, and consequently, extended playing techniques. The very ways in which these elements are combined are in fact re-combined and appropriated as the well-designed object that is the intonarumori; though the laptop is a closed machine, the overarching concept and box is completely open, sounding as unique as they look.

Unravelling the creative processes responsible for La Chambre…, Bernier explains the dichotomy between old and new: “what’s important to me is the object. What I’m attracted [to] is old; I’m a fan of antiques and when these antiques make sound, now I’m getting really super excited! And that’s because all my creation process is so — there’s something so virtual. You’re in front of your computer and you, your music is in a file and then you want to send your music to a friend and you send it via the web and you receive and you did all this with one single object.” Perhaps in describing another project of his with Simon Trottier (of the Polaris Prize nominated Timber Timbre), Bernier’s statement is equally a propos of La Chambre des Machines. He says, “it’s the fundamental thing I’m trying to do is look at the past and the future and to find a way to be atemporal.”

Both artists have a significant track record of composition for theatre and dance. They bring their experiences from these realms back to their sound-based canvas and explain the influence. Says Messier, “of course there’s a lot of influence that comes from theatre and dance shows that we see and work on and that’s maybe why we’re focusing on gesture and not just on doing the right note at exactly the right place. That’s maybe why also its more about the show and than just the music. We’re really focusing on sound but for this kind of project it’s more about a show. It’s little things; it’s how do I take my clocks and how can I take it with my hands so people can see it… How you use your body — it’s not a huge choreography but it’s a little thing that we’re thinking about so visually it makes a difference.” In performing La Chambre des Machines, Messier and Bernier are fully immersed in the experience, which comes in part from digital sources, and from tactile and physical. They get their bodies behind their playing of the intonarumori and their relationship with these machines is active. With the open-machine in mind, Bernier and Messier share the performing experience with the viewer on both the intimate, small-scale and on a large-scale when they incorporate video for larger venues. The work becomes more immersive for the artists and audiences.

Bernier agrees in that theatre and dance have — “100% had an influence. To work on dance and theatre and to see all that people are doing — it’s just another world completely. That to me, as a music guy, as a sound guy, I would never have been into that world and just to see how they construct things how they think about movement and about light, it’s developing that sensibility.”

Building on this, Messier says, “sometimes, people are telling me what I’m doing it’s theatrical but I’m like ’no, it’s music, I’m just focusing a bit more than you on gesture but it’s obvious for me that I’m not doing theatre because I take this like that and you don’t.’ But we’re still musicians. We want to incorporate lights and all these things but we’re still thinking as composers.”

There is fluidity in the approach that Messier and Bernier take to composing and preparing their works. Whether it is by incorporating elements from theatre and dance or with the programming they do on the digital side of things. Messier says, “I’ve learned a lot from programming because it helps when you have an idea to know ’okay, you have a problem, how can I solve it?’ And it can be applied to whatever you’re doing, it’s not just Max-MSP, it’s when you’re composing, it’s when you want this mechanism to make a sound like [a certain way]. How can I find that?”

With the spirit of Russolo’s railways, iron foundries and underground railways in mind and where Bernier and Messier incorporate a broad palette of influences and sound sources to their work, when asked to consider what place noise has in their music, Bernier explains, “it’s really weird because now I have a feeling that the fashion now is not in electronic sound but more and more in organic sound and I am really shifting into tones and noise. So noise is really important in our lives. Yes, noises are really important. It’s a part of our life! It’s a part of our day to day!”

Eine thematische Klammer kann fesseln oder sie kann ungeahnte Kräfte freisetzen, weil die Spielwiese vorab definiert ist. Letzteres scheint mit courant.air passiert zu sein. Das Thema ist “Wind”. Gesetzt hat es sich der junge Elektroakustiker Nicolas Bernier, den ich irgendwo zwischen Ircam und Apo33 einordnen würde in der Landschaft der französischen Kompositionsschulen (hui hui). Sein Klangmaterial bezieht Bernier größenteils aus dem Gitarrenspiel von Simon Trottier, dessen Folk-Idiome er zum Teil als kleine unbeschadete Pflänzlein am Wegesrand aufblühen lässt. Größtenteils kann die Gitarre aber nur erahnt werden. Es beginnt mit einem dichten, elektronischen Brausen und fügt sich zu verspielten konkreten Movements, eher die Platte im hinteren Teil sehr still und leise funktioniert. Wie als wäre etwas zerstäubt worden, wie als hätte der Wind alle möglichen Töne von den Saiten der Akustischen gestrichen, die nun wie eine verwahrloste aeolean harp in den Böen hängt. So läßt einen das Album aufgruind dieset antizyklischen Dynamik nachdenklich zurück; es bleiben süßeste Erinnerungen an die Farbenpracht und die Klangfülle. Seufz!

Un autre très beau disque de Nicolas Bernier qui, depuis Les Arbres, ne cesse de m’impressionner. courant.air est une pièce électroacoustique mixte pour guitare acoustique et bande en huit mouvements. Simon Trottier est à la guitare. L’instrument est utilisé parcimonieusement, dans des parties semi-annotées qui contrastent les accompagnements électroacoustiques mobiles et parfois assez touffus. Le tout forme une musique pas si planante que ça et très engageante. Belle qualité d’écriture, élégance, peut-être un tantinet répétitif. courant.air n’a pas l’envergure de Les Arbres, mais il est très réussi.