Normandeau is a master of sonic allusion and metaphor, and these acousmatic works offer a powerful listen. Le renard et la rose will be known to many in the ICMA world, since it was commissioned for ICMC 1995 in Banff, and has received many performances since. It’s a piece of extraordinary depth, in which human speech sounds are woven into a multi-layered tapestry of meaning and movement. Opening with irresistible sounds of laughter and exuberance, it expands outwards to occupy and play in space. Like Spleen, a related work, it harnesses the force of onomatopoeia and rejoices in the primitive vigour of a rhythmic beat. Listening to this work in concert was fascinating, but over headphones there’s perhaps an even greater sense of being immersed in the spattering, ‘animal’ activity of a community of sounds, that are at once both clean and dark, joyful and ominous.

Figures de rhétorique is an enigmatic re-interpretation of the piano and tape genre — or rather, in this case, tape and piano — in which the pianist ‘makes’ his performance in relation to the tape part, itself derived from piano timbres. The work is constructed by employing sonic metaphors related to precise figures of meaning in rhetoric. Though it is impossible (for this listener at least) to embark on aural butterfly-catching, to pin these metaphors down, one doesn’t need to in order to appreciate the dramatic variety of the gestures, most notably in the tape part. Whilst the pitch content tends to anchor itself to a single centre, the variety of gestural motion and interaction provides a means of going on.

Venture is a large-scale work inspired by Normandeau’s formative experience of listening to progressive rock, and uses samples of the same as its material. Like much of his work the piece is in interlinked movements that each refer to what Normandeau calls different ‘states of existence’. It’s a work of symphonic ambition — an ambition it shares, of course, with much progressive rock of the 70s — and has a clear ‘emotional’ trajectory that carries the listener from one sound-world to another. Fragments of Pictures from an Exhibition are interwoven within it, and the tantalising glimpses become more explicit as the work progresses. And, of course, it ends with a nice big string-synth chord. Music about music is difficult to bring off, but this piece works, I think, at a deeper level — as a quite personal journey into the roots of one person’s musical ‘psyche’.

Ellipse, the final piece on the CD, is a wonderfully tactile and effervescent exploration of guitar timbres. The tightening of strings, the sound of the tuning peg straining against the neck — and then when we think we know where we are the sounds explode into pointillistic cloud of splinters, plucked strings, knocks and whirrs. This is a piece in which the material is the materiality of an object — wood, gut, fingers against strings. For this listener it was a sonic equivalent of watching as a miniature camera shoots around inside the guitar, revealing the previously known as an unknown new world with surprising dimensions, and then flying out into space — viewing the same object from a global perspective.

As Normandeau points out in his notes, all the pieces on the CD have dedications to specific people (in the case of Figures, the pianist Jacques Drouin, who features as performer on the CD). Figures are bodies, and Normandeau interprets this notion in various ways. To my ears, a touch of humanity figures highly.

Award winner of 1996’s Golden Nica of the Ars Electronica, Normandeau has for a number of years both studied electroacoustic music and translated them into his own acousmatic compositions; gaining a few degrees’ worth of intemational recognition in the process. Figures clearly demonstrates why this French-Canadian has generated several ripples, too. The third work in a cycle that commenced in 1991 with the release of Tangram (also on empreintes DIGITALes), it’s based on voice ‘sounds’ (as opposed to speech) & magnetic tape construrtions and knitted piano or guitar compositions thematically related to the voice. And, as with the other releases so far encountered on this Canadian label, a high calibre soundbed of intricately woven shimmers, shards & tinkling is spun to an absorbing scale at once dramatic & disciplined. Without coming from such an academic background in music, I have to ‘fess that it’s kinda hard to place such works outside the same instinctive reactions one might also apply to a Ceramic Hobs disc or whatever but, on the other hand, what’s so wrong with that, anyway? Especially when such instincts inform you that you’re actually listening to some pretty good stuff. Which, ladies & gentlemen, is precisely the case here. I welcome some Normandeau additions to the collection. And so should you…

The convoluted world of musique concrète is on occasion somewhat baffling. Trawling through the piles of albums available by names only vaguely familiar even to east Europeans makes picking up a goodie a hit and miss affair. And that’s where the compilations come in. They ought to be informed, coherently assembled, albums that provide a way through musique concrète’s many blind alleys. Sadly, few work beyond the “interesting.”

This one, however, is a terrifically enjoyable journey through 24 tracks assembled to be just 3 minutes long each. The 3 minute stipulation tightens up the inclination to sloppiness and, strangely, brings a playfulness to the works. There’s a very high standard here, representing some of the better constructors around (Tremblay, Hoffman and Lillios in particular are fabulous). As important as the recordings, the album comes (in a fold-out cardboard box) with an enormously useful 32-page booklet (in French and English) detailing the resumés of the artists concerned.

Staggering array of electroacoustic pieces; mostly miniatures either forming part of a lengthy cycle or represented in their own right. All recorded between 1994 to 1997, they apparently mark an important period in Montréal based Daniel Leduc’s approach to composition drawing on the sources of acousmatics and the transition from analogue to digital techniques. The range encompasses everything from dynamic bursts of contained random sound elements to tempered collages and tinely-tuned tapping into what normally passes by unheard. Sometimes subdued, sometimes bordering on the tempestuous, these pieces, all created from samples, chart a highly infectious causeway to the cusp of an island positively commanding our attention. With a number of teaching credits and a chriving interest in multimedia to his name as well, it’ll be interesting to see whether or not Leduc sustains his compositional drive without sacrifice. Meanwhile, this album literally begs your attention.

Presence ([released in 1997…] followed by Présence II in 2000) replaces the “DISContact!” series as the Canadian Electroacoustic Community [CEC] mean of spreading the works of its members. Exit the clip format (pieces under three minutes) that was at the basis of DISContact! and DISContact! II: this time pieces are selected for their interest and the goal is to put good music in the hands of listeners instead of as many composers as possible. Some works are a few seconds shy from 15 minutes while one is under 60 seconds.

Most of the 23 featured composers are Canadian (some are French, American, Spanish), teachers and students. All of them are seldom found on record (but some are regulars of the CEC’s compilations: Steve Bradley, Diana McIntosh, Jean Routhier, Daniel Zimbaldo). As with any arbitrarily-built compilation (pieces are presented in alphabetical order of the composers, regardless of compatibilities), some pieces are breath-taking, others are quickly forgotten.

Highlights include Rémy Carré’s La Trace du Souffle, Jan Jarvlepp’s Buoyancy (using only cello sounds to great effect) and David Lindsay’s Cetacean Progress.

Première chose qui saute à l’oreille après le concert de jeudi soir: il y a bel et bien une «école de Montréal» en électroacoustique. Toutes les œuvres entendues au programme participent d’une même approche, celle lancée par Pierre Schaeffer. Cela consiste en le fait qu’il a fallu, pour le nouvel art qu’était la musique faite de sons enregistrés, manipulés ou électroniquement générés, définir un vocabulaire, inventer un solfège et composer un répertoire de sons et de manipulations sonores. Ce dernier point est malheureusement trop souvent confondu avec la composition elle-même, ce qui rend l’art alors un certain art acousmatique stérile.

Le programme s’ouvrait et se fermait avec deux extraits de Francis Dhomont. On ainsi voulu rendre un hommage à celui qui est de plus en plus reconnu comme le «fondateur» de cette école. À l’heure où il œuvrait à la Faculté de musique de l’Université de Montréal, quand on parlait de musique électroacoustique, le membre artistique de l’équation primait sur le technique.

Non seulement la musique de Dhomont reste-t-elle encore belle et jeune, mais diffusée ainsi en salle — Robert Normandeau!, sublime poète de la console! — sa dimension réelle éblouit avec autant de force que de sensualité, d’intelligence que d’inspiration. Peu importe le média, la grande musique, c’est cela. Mémoires vives, du ci-nommé Normandeau, est une pièce un peu rhétorique (je maintiens mon jugement antérieur), mais qui passe mieux en salle qu’au disque — comme tout le reste du programme d’ailleurs; après tout, on n’a chez soi que deux haut-parleurs plutôt que l’armada ici sollicitée et l’espace utilisé. Dommage pourtant que le climat fût brouillé par un impair technique, équivalent du trou de mémoire au concert «habituel» et qui a toutefois démontré que, oui, quelque part, ces machines à musique restaient humaines.

Le plus beau moment, là où vraiment on a senti une succession au maître fondateur, reste les Paysages intérieurs, de Stéphane Roy. Non seulement la «bande» est splendide, mais Normandeau s’est hissé à des sommets d’inspiration interprétative pour la rendre exceptionnellement sensible. On est pris par cette mouvance qui s’ouvre et qui nous ouvre, qui tourne qui appelle, parfois répond, et qui nous dit… que si on fait cette musique, c’est qu’elle doit être faite ainsi car le message ne saurait être livré autrement. […]