Electroacoustic composer Dan Lander released his first CD in 1995 on the Montréal label empreintes DIGITALes. Zoo regroups four works created between 1988 and 1992. The first two are the most important, interesting and disturbing; they both address communication through the use of speech-based sound material. Talking to a Loudspeaker is a 24 minute reflection on radio. Highly entertaining and witty, it illustrates Lander’s absurd sense of humor. It opens on a series of excerpts from the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, everyone saying “Please Mister Speaker” and “Thanks Mister Speaker” (read the title of the piece again if you don’t understand why). After this introduction, the listener is taken through clichés about the weather, a staged call-in show plagued with technical difficulties, a collage of radio publicity spots — even 30 seconds of dead air. Destroy: Information Only is a lot more disturbing. A piece of audio vérité, it features friends and relatives of the composer recorded in their homes, reminiscing about a surgery he had. Over 34 minutes, their vague memories and personal anecdotes are confronted and mixed with acousmatic bits, forming an intimidating form of auto-exorcism. Failed Suicide also uses human speech as its basis, but with less interesting resutls. City Zoo / Zoo City arranges field recordings of a zoo into a loose narrative while blurring distinctions between the natural and the mechanical. Lander’s pieces require attentive listening in order to follow the discourse. His approach is highly personal, but his constant relying on words might unnerve some listeners.

Serge Arcuri’s Les méandres du rêve is an untypical release for the musique concrète label empreintes DIGITALes. Although the composer works with concrete sounds and creates tape music, his approach also includes lots of recorded keyboard parts and performed instruments. The resulting music belongs as much to mixed electroacoustics music as to new-age instrumental music. The first five pieces on this CD form a cycle, Les méandres du rêve (“Dream’s Meanders”), the musical part of a creation which also included choreography and scenography. After a short prelude, the listener dives head first into Arcuri’s dreamy world. La porte des sables, based on Tahar Ben Jelloun’s novel The Sand Child, includes electroacoustic sounds, oboe, English horn, and MIDI percussion. References to Arabic sonorities turn this piece into something a lot more evocative (and engaging) than what could be expected. If Murmure comes closer to a standard tape piece, Errances (for tape, oboe and harp) and Lueurs (for tape, French horn and percussion) cross over many genres, from 20th century classical to synthesizer music, both of them beautiful musical dreams. To complete the program, Arcuri added Résurgence and Chronaxie (for tape and percussion), two earlier pieces. The first one is a traditional tape piece without any distinctive qualities, while the second consists of his first experience in mixed composition. Percussionist Trevor Tureski appears on a total of three tracks, but even when he does not contribute the music remains very rhythmical. Les méandres du rêve is not your average tape music album and will appeal more to synthesizer-based instrumental music lovers than musique concrète purists.

Articles indéfinis (“Indefinite Articles”) is Jonty Harrison’s first CD. Here are collected five works of musique concrète spanning more than 15 years. The set begins with Pair / Impair, a piece created in 1978 but aging very well, based upon the notions of dynamic and static. The highlight of this CD is … et ainsi de suite…, which Harrison describes as a “French suite” in the purest musique concrète tradition. The 11 segments (mostly in the one-to-two-minutes range) present variations on the sound of wine glasses. Together with Aria, they illustrate Harrison’s fascination with movement and sound spatialization. Each segment comes back to the glasses and push their sound into another direction. Aria and Hot Air both use the prime element of air as their main sound source. The latter contains a wide range of dynamics. The composer would later create two more pieces (included on Évidence matérielle) using prime elements, wood and water, fuller and better constructed. Unsound Objects is clearly weaker: it lacks focus and poetry. Articles indéfinis proved there was serious research on musique concrète going on in England and that Harrison deserved a place among the leading figures of the genre, but his second CD would be stronger.

Louis Dufort’s first CD revealed an original electroacoustics composer who, while relying heavily on the type of acousmatics created within the walls of Music faculties, managed to give his pieces an unusual delinquent twist. What other composer asked the singer of a death metal band to supply sound sources? You can hear the grunts of Gorguts’ Luc Lemay on Zénith and Décap. Dufort did not tear down the wall between the two forms of expression, but he sure found in Lemay a surprising interpreter. When his voice appears, the piece gains in dramatic intensity. Along with the human voice, machines hold an important place in Dufort’s art. Pointe-aux-Trembles was inspired by the refineries of East-end Montréal, while from parts of Décap arise temporary industrial rhythms. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the latter was first created for a choreography by Marie Chouinard (it stands very well on its own). Transit is the most conventional work of this set, an acousmatic study on “continuous discontinuity” (the composer’s choice of words). Less striking mostly because of its weaker structure, it still contains intriguing sounds and textures. Connexion makes a very strong debut from an artist who could rise up to become a singular member of the electroacoustic community.

Father of British acousmatic music, Jonty Harrison’s art runs deep and allies technique, poetry and a strong sense of sound spatialization. The works included on Évidence matérielle make no exception to this rule. The album begins with Klang, the oldest piece of this set and maybe Harrison’s best known work (it was released on two previous occasions and was awarded a Bourges Awards Euphonie d’Or in 1992). It is a beautiful, captivating electroacoustic concerto using sounds derived from two pots and electronically-produced sounds. Sorties (“Exits”) blends environmental recordings to musique concrète techniques to evoke the escaping, the fleeing of indoors for the outdoors. Surface Tension is the most acousmatical work, presenting sound for sound’s sake, a good example of the composer’s sense of drama. The two last pieces, Splintering and Streams, use prime materials, wood and water respectively. Here sounds retain part of their signification, but this technique results in less powerful works. They bring to mind Annette Vande Gorne’s Tao cycle. Some people will prefer these less abstract pieces. Anyway, Évidence matérielle is somehow more appealing than the dryer Articles indéfinis, Harrison’s previous release on empreintes DIGITALes.

A student of Jonty Harrison, the British electroacoustic composer Adrian Moore inherited his mentor’s sense of movement, while pushing further his sound poetry. Traces collects five works created between 1994 and 1997. Junky and Dreamarena could be described as “ambient electroacoustics.” Sound sources have been stripped from their context and sculpted into tonal and rhythmical structures. The first piece could almost be mistaken for an ambient synthesizer piece, while the second one shovels sounds back and forth between the listener’s ears, creating dreamy ever-changing soundscapes. Study in Ink and Foil-Counterfoil are both built on one main sound source. The first one uses a marker pen on a whiteboard. Both funny and puzzling, it has an interesting “squeaky” quality. The second, based on recordings of tin foil, is more conventional and mechanical. The closing piece, Sieve, is described by the composer as a “radiogenic work”: natural (as in “real world”) sounds are heard accompanied by their electronic manipulations. The large number of sound sources used and the constant analysis the listener must do to relate them to their manipulated counterparts make for a busy, rich, exhausting work. This one is very impressive, resists to multiple listens, and serves as a perfect closer, leaving an impression of fulfilling creativity which radiates on the whole album. If one puts Foil-Counterfoil aside, Traces becomes one very strong musique concrète CD. Recommended.