Having produced several instrumental and mixed works, his current endeavors are focused on acousmatic music. More specifically, his compositions employ æsthetic criteria whereby he creates a “cinema for the ear” in which ‘meaning’ as well as ‘sound’ become elements which elaborate his works. Along with concert music he now writes incidental music, especially for the theater. His works are performed and broadcast around the world and have received prizes and mentions in numerous competitions. “Earthlight. One of the strongest images of the achievements we witnessed during the 20th century. These pictures of the earth taken from space will forever stay in our minds.” Normandeau’s Clair de terre is build up with a cinematic structure as the titles of each movement reveals. The two other titles introduces us to Normandeau’s world when he composes for the stage (theater). They are made up of sonic elements he used for music composed for the stage. This is Robert Normandeau’s fourth release on empreintes DIGITALes.

Denis Smalley is an electroacoustic composer from New Zealand who has spent a year in Olivier Messiaen’s composition class at the Conservatoire de Paris and is currently the Head of the Music Department at the City University of London. Smalley has received a number of international awards for his work over the past 25 years. The music on this CD is a collection of four pieces from his long career. Base Metals, Empty Vessels, and Tides are the realization of the idea that a principal sound source can be the provider of the central material. In Base Metals the source was metallic sound sculptures created by the artist Derek Shiel. The result is an ambient sonic journey through the cosmos. The sound sources for Empty Vessels are large garden pots from Crete and an olive jar from Turkey. This piece incorporates many other elements (birds, airplanes thunder, and rain) and is akin to Lustmords Where the Black Stars Hang. The sonic images of Tides are based on the analogies between water and sound. In the first movement Pools and Currents, digital scraping, bubbling, and squelching sounds surge with the ebb and flow of the tides. The second movement, Sea Flight, uses crashing waves of sound. The final piece, Pentes, brings into play loud bursts of sound, chugging rhythms, slow crescendos of chords, and small alien critters to achieve the sonic equivalent of slopes and inclines. All in all, an interesting release that is fairly accessible for this genre.

Jonty Harrison is another British electroacoustic composer and his CD may be the most accessible of three recent DiM [empreintes DIGITALes] releases (Sources/scènes, Traces, and Évidence matérielle). This CD contains five compositions spanning the past ten years. The first piece, Klang, uses the sounds of two earthenware casseroles to which Jonty adds the ingredients of cow-bells, metal rods, and aluminum bars to prepare an eerie meal of reverberating tones. Sorties is about fleeing an interior space for an exterior one, only to find that you are mysteriously trapped in a much larger interior space, like being inside one of those Russian dolls. The sonic sources are recognizable (cars, trucks, trains, walking shoes, children at play) and only add to the dark and brooding atmosphere of the composition. Surface Tension is constructed literally from the dry brittle sounds of packing material (Styrofoam and cardboard) that, after processing, have a somewhat organic texture as the material is put under greater and greater stress. Shifting now to wood and its varied sounds as it is twisted, tapped, burned, and otherwise strained is the subject matter for Splintering. Clocking in at almost 20 minutes, it might be overlong. The final piece is Streams with the obvious water reference. Water can be so melodic and Jonty wrings out all of its nuances in Streams. If you are interested in cutting-edge electroacoustic music, check out the DiM [empreintes DIGITALes] label and, especially, Jonty Harrison.

The music on this CD falls into three categories: the abstract (Junky, Dreamarena), hearing natural sounds in a different context (Study in Ink, Foil-Counterfoil), and electronic manipulation of natural sounds (Sieve). Traces is difficult music. The abstract pieces present glimpses of other music and sound sources through a fog of electronic pops and gurgles. The pieces using sounds in new and different contexts can be quite frightening. The sonic textures are organic and evoke images of crunching bones and tearing flesh. Sieve is a total distortion of the source material leaving the listener lost in space without a point of reference. Traces is music for only the most adventuresome of listeners.

V.V. is one Ven Voisey, who it seems also runs the Throat label, on which this disc was released earlier this year. Things collapse in on themselves features one track that is just under 18 minutes in length. It begins with the sounds of rain, escalating slowly in volume and intensity until a sudden shift takes place, as if closing the door on the rainfall, leaving only an uneven dripping of water along with random concrete sounds. A simple loop on acoustic guitar creates a slow and repetitive lull in the middle of the piece, accompanied by flashes of static and all manner strange sounds. The noise builds and builds, the guitar disappears, the hiss rises in intensity, the sounds become closer and louder, until the piece finally climaxes, coming full circle as it falls back into the rainfall from the opening sequence. V.V. has created an intense and dramatic piece here, and this short disc is quite enough pique my interest about what might be next for him. Recommended.

Yves Daoust contribuait en 1978 à la fondation de l’Association pour la création et la recherche électroacoustiques du Québec (ACREQ). Il dirigera par la suite durant une dizaine d’années les destinées du premier organisme canadien voué exclusivement à ce genre. Aujourd’hui, il y revient à l’invitation du directeur artistique actuel, Alain Thibault, pour participer ce samedi 10 novembre à la troisième édition de l’événement Elektra. Daoust y présentera en création sa pièce Bruits, triptyque environnemental qui donne également son titre au troisième disque que le compositeur fait paraître chez empreintes DIGITALes et qui sera lancé juste avant le concert. La pièce, commande du Sonic Arts Network (Royaume-Uni), est une sorte de carte postale sonore des rues et ruelles de Montréal: cris d’enfants, bruits de la circulation et rumeurs citadines y sont littéralement passés au hachoir pour produire ce que le compositeur appelle un «smog sonore». C’est sans aucun doute l’œuvre la plus ‘bruitiste’ de Daoust jusqu’à maintenant. L’œuvre sera présentée à l’ACREQ dans une version pour huit canaux avec un support vidéographique de Jean-Sébastien Durocher.

Le disque que Daoust s’apprête à lancer mérite certainement d’être chaudement recommandé à toute personne qui serait curieuse et chercherait à se renseigner sur la musique électroacoustique. Que le titre Bruits ne vous effraie pas. Les quatre pièces présentées ici représentent autant de sous-genres et Yves Daoust y démontre magistralement son grand talent de manipulateur sonore. On y retrouve une magnifique version de la pièce Impromptu, déjà entendue en format «pour bande seule» sur son précédent disque Musiques naïves, mais retravaillée ici en version «musique mixte» avec des interprètes de choix: Jacques Drouin au piano et Lorraine Vaillancourt… au synthétiseur! La pièce La Gamme est une musique électronique réalisée en 1981 sur les «machines à triturer les électrons» du Groupe de musique expérimentale de Bourges. Enfin, Ouverture, commande du GMEB pour le Bicentenaire de la Révolution française, mêle narration et illustration sonore, et rappelle par son thème Le Trésor de la langue de René Lussier. empreintes DIGITALes fera également paraître simultanément des disques de Robert Normandeau et Gilles Gobeil, deux autres piliers de la musique électroacoustique d’ici, disques sur lesquels nous reviendrons. Yves Daoust enseigne depuis 1981 au Conservatoire de musique et d’art dramatique du Québec, où il a développé un programme de composition électroacoustique.

Preuve qu’il exerce dans ce domaine-là aussi un grand talent, c’est l’un de ses étudiants qui clôturera la soirée avec une pièce qu’il ramène d’Autriche où elle a obtenu une mention lors de la dernière édition des prestigieux Prix Ars Electronica. Louis Dufort nous présentera en effet Décap, une «réflexion sur la décadence de l’homme» en partie tirée de la musique composée pour la chorégraphie Le Cri du monde, de Marie Chouinard, et dont nous avons pu entendre une première version lors de la série de concerts Rien à voir (7) en mars 2000. Également au programme: Tom Sherman et Bernhard Loibner avec leur projet vidéo/musique Nerve Theory et le très attendu Markus Popp, alias Oval, détenteur d’une seconde place aux Prix Ars Electronica 2001.