This new disc by Montréal based electroacoustic composer Gilles Gobeil picks up where his last disc, La mécanique des ruptures (also on empreintes DIGITALes), left off. It presents four compositions from 1995 through 2001. The first piece, Derrière la porte la plus éloignée… (1998) is punctuated by deep, broad and dynamic breaths. The piece undergoes a series of dramatic and earth-shattering changes, revealing an incomprehensible intensity and concentration of sound similar in spirit to what I found on his previous record. The next three pieces take their inspiration from works of fiction. Projet Proust (1995, 2001) incorporates a reading of the first few pages of Proust’s Du côté de chez Swann (Swann’s Way) with a constantly shifting sound field. Point de passage (1997) is an adaptation of HG Wells’ The Time Machine, but there is no narration; instead the adaptation is manifested with pure sound, strange machinery and metallic clamouring. The fourth and final piece is based on Jules Verne’s Voyage au centre de la terre (Journey to the Centre of the Earth), having found its inspiration in Verne’s fantastic accounts of the underworld. Gobeil’s vision as seen through these four compositions is characteristically dark and surreal. The dynamic and shifting nature of his sounds is truly remarkable; they occupy a broad trajectory on the stereo spectrum, and seem reach out from their confines into the space around you. This is difficult listening, the kind of music that pulls the carpet from under your feet and sends you headfirst into an unsteady and nightmarish world. So it’s not for everyone, nor is it for everyday listening, but it’s a fascinating trip nonetheless. Nicely done.

Rien à voir (nothing to see) is not true. When Robert Normandeau sets up tomorrow night at the Robert Gill Theatre, the stage will in fact be filled with something — a load of sound-amplifying speakers. Anything else, like real people or just a simple music stand, might get in the way of the musical sounds. And that’s one thing that won’t happen at a Normandeau concert of electronic music. Here the sound is a spectacle even if it has nothing to show (perhaps a word should be coined for this sound-only show, something like an “auracle.” There have been those over the years who have urged the 46-year old composer to add a visual element. “But we resist,” he replies. “It’s called Rien à voir to make clear to everyone this is not a show.” This can be a problem for some people. So can the sounds Normandeau creates — abstract, tuneless rhythm-free whooshes and swooshes, and electronica that goes ping in the dark. Tomorrow night, he is joined by two other practitioners of this art in the dark: his mentor, Francis Dhomont and a younger colleague, Louis Dufort. “At this concert, there really is nothing to look at,” Normandeau says. “There is nothing of interest to sit in front of. The performance itself is minimal. It is often presented in the dark.” Does this sound like a lot of fun? Well, it can be, he goes on. “In this way, the audience becomes an audience,” he says. What happens is probably the most musical experience in anyone’s life. Electroacoustic music was Normandeau’s turf well before he got his degree in musical composition from Université Laval in Québec City in 1984. Back in the early ’80s, it looked like the place to be. It looked like it might be the future of serious music, taking it to the next level. It even had a base in popular culture. All those techno-Brit bands were making electro-sounds so fashionable in hip magazines like The Face. Even Paul McCartney talked about Stockhausen, electronic music’s Big Cheese. So much for yesterday. Instead of replacing symphonic classical music, electronic music became its frighteningly eccentric second cousin. Since then, we’ve had no choice but to love it on its own terms. “Electroacoustic music should not be compared to anything else,” says Normandeau. “The major innovation in it is that the composer does everything in the studio. He doesn’t have to care about the reality of the stage or the realism of his gestures. He doesn’t have to think about someone else reading his score.” “I think being this kind of composer is a lot closer to being a writer or sculptor. We work like sculptors; we sculpt sound and space. We have to adjust our performance to the acoustics of the hall. Basically the music is written in the studio, but we have to fine-tune it for the performance.” “But even with this kind of taped music, I don’t think a live performance can be replaced. The live performance is important for human beings. It is a ritual. Going to a place and spending time with other people is something we need in our lives. “In the past, when we thought about electronic music as being the extension of the instrumental musical world, it didn’t work out very well because the electronic instruments are pretty primitive compared to regular instruments. The quality of sound you have when you play a violin or piano comes from centuries of research. In fact, we haven’t invented a new instrument in over a century. The last one was a saxophone.” Yes, but there is the computer, he admits. This is good news for composers and bad news. The bad news is that, “when you are working with a computer, you lose contact with the music. You watch what you are doing. You lose contact with the sound. Yet because with computers so many people are working at home, music can become very personal and very intimate.”

Alibi is Jacques Tremblay’s first solo CD. It culls six tape music works created between 1990 and 1995. Except for the three-minute Jeu d’ondes, all pieces are lengthy and divided in multiple movements. Tremblay’s main source of inspiration is psychoanalysis. A quote from Carl Gustav Jung underpins Hérésie ou les bas-reliefs du dogme (“Heresy or Dogma’s Bas-Reliefs”). In this long, complex piece, the composer accumulates quotes about various historical events, all related to Man acting on the behalf of God (i.e. using religion as a moral motor or excuse). The facts are presented pseudo-objectively; Tremblay’s commentary is inscribed in the sonic movements. Oaristys and L’intrus au chapeau de spleen both play on the unconscious, suggesting eroticism in the first case and an initiatory journey in the second. Both pieces’ dramatic tension resides in the unsaid. In comparison, La robe nue and Rictus nocturne sound a little thin, even though the second takes jazz for subject. But the promised “jam session” never materializes. There is something of Francis Dhomont’s art in Tremblay’s music, his ability to toy with the subconscious; but while Dhomont actualizes his fascination with psychoanalysis in storytelling, Tremblay remains stuck in the evanescent. His works evoke many things, but the listener comes out of them without a lasting impression. Nevertheless, Alibi makes a good album of “classic” electroacoustic music.

One of the leading female electroacoustic composers of the generation born with “musique concrète” (“discovered” in 1948 by Pierre Schaeffer), Annette Vande Gorne has illustrated herself not only through her works, but also as a teacher, theoretician, animator, and promoter of electroacoustics in Europe, especially in her native Belgium. Her major works from the 1980s and 1990s have been published by the Quebec label empreintes DIGITALes on two CDs, Tao (1993) and Le Gingko(1995, reissued in 1998 as Impalpables).

Annette Vande Gorne had already completed her classical music studies at the Mons and Brussels Royal Conservatories when she first came in contact with electroacoustic music. She was in France for a brief stay at the time. The works of Pierre Henry and François Bayle made her see in acousmatics an uncharted territory. She took training courses with Henry, François Delalande, and at the Groupe de Musique Expérimentale de Bourges, and studied electroacoustic composition with Schaeffer.

By 1980 she was active as a composer while teaching classical music history. In 1982 she founded the Musiques & Recherche center and the Métamorphoses d’Orphée studio, two of the earliest electroacoustic institutions in Belgium. She organized the first festival L’Espace du Son (Brussels, Mons) in 1984 and published the review Liens while putting together a documentation center on acousmatic art. Starting in 1986 she was appointed professor of electroacoustic composition at the Royal Conservatories in Liège, Brussels and Mons.

Vande Gorne is often drawn to metaphysical subjects. Her cycle Tao is a reflection on the four basic elements of taoism. Her relation with words is also crucial to her work. Following Francis Dhomont’s example, she forays into text-music relations. Her collaborations with poet Werner Lambersy are particularly successful.

This young German composer served an ace with his creation, far away from the usual empreintes DIGITALes ambiences which you’re used to bath in. And so, no concrete or ‘classic’ acousmatics; instead, a stunning twilight of sound stratification, just like linear clouds in a half-sun, half-rain day. A deep digging composition, you’ll need concentration at ‘10’ to fully appreciate its mastery; rest assured you’ll be richly rewarded. empreintes DIGITALes keeps being high in the bill of consistency, as far as avant-garde labels are concerned.

Le disque consacré à Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux a été lancé en prélude aux concerts entourant le 30^e anniversaire du Studio de musique électroacoustique du Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal, dont elle coordonna les débuts avec Gilles Tremblay et Otto Joachim. En 1967, elle se voyait décerner un premier prix de composition du Conservatoire et le Prix d’Europe avec une œuvre pour grand orchestre et ondes Martenot, ce qui lui permit de travailler, en 1968, à la suggestion de Iannis Xenakis, avec le Groupe de recherches musicales (GRM) et de suivre les cours de Pierre Schaeffer, inventeur de la musique concrète. En 1969, elle participa à la fondation du Groupe international de musique électroacoustique de Paris, avant de revenir enseigner à Montréal en 1971.

Convaincue que «le véritable créateur se définit par son refus de perpétuer les expériences passées», elle composera sans regarder en arrière et contribuera grandement au développement de la musique électroacoustique. C’est ce que ce disque nous propose de (re)découvrir. La production est d’une grande qualité, et c’est un véritable bonheur que d’entendre cette musique qui se composait beaucoup avec des ciseaux et du scotch tape, et qui n’hésitait pas à laisser parler le son sans le grimer outre mesure (c’était avant le Macintosh et les programmes tout fais!).