The cover artwork of Denis Smalley’s CD Sources/scènes is in blue monochrome. It describes the composer’s acousmatic pieces very well: cold and mysterious. The works collected here span three decades and their running order invites the listener to move backward in time. Base Metals (2000) features sounds produced by artist Derek Shiel’s sound sculptures, but these are rendered abstract through electronic manipulation. The 1997 Empty Vessels was constructed with recordings made from inside large garden pots. The air resonating in them and the environmental sounds happening around them (birds, rain) are kept much intact by the composer. It creates a very original atmosphere. The diptych Tides is based on water sounds. It dates back to 1984, which means its detached dryness could be imputed to the digital technology available at the time. The two dark movements feature many simultaneous layers of sound, but while they succeed in creating suitable atmospheres, they don’t captivate the listener the way they should. Strangely, the 1974 Pentes feels less outdated. Using instrumental and synthesized sounds, it has a nice organic feel and features the drone of Northumbrian Pipes for harmonic modulations. This piece provides the only lighthearted moment on this otherwise sombre CD. In the end, Sources/scènes is a mixed bag of ingenuous and very ordinary works.

Jonty Harrison, directeur du BEAST, groupe de compositeurs anglo-saxon se plait à définir son album comme une flânerie sensorielle, déambulation libre le long d’une avenue idéalisée où les magasins sont autant de tonalités électroniques sur l’asphalte «concret». Une casserole, des déchets de consommation courante, tiges de métal, bruits de forêt, autant de sons bruts, d’objets usuels et d’environnements fréquentés qui prennent une tournure onirique et abstraite dans les mains de cet anglais de génie. Plus intimiste et académique, cet album calme et riche reste éblouissant de maîtrise.

Louis Dufort, 31 ans, premier prix du Conservatoire de Montréal, compositeur de la compagnie de Marie Chouinard, est un brillant iconoclaste. Il aime ainsi à intégrer des éléments non-musicaux dans sa trame musicale: «Objets, corps, couleurs et anecdotes sonores donnent lieu à des jeux de perception dans lesquelles est immergé l’auditeur. Les matériaux sonores sont ainsi trafiqués pour en soutirer des profils musicaux où poésie et représentation narrative du son servent de balises à l’élaboration de l’œuvre». La limpidité de ses travaux offre un profond vertige soucieux d’allier tradition et modernité. Ses compositions électroacoustiques et atmosphériques sont empruntes d’angoisse, d’images pesantes et d’accalmies majestueusement fluides et dynamiques dans le même temps. Comme si Francisco López signé la BO de «la machine molle» sur Ant-Zen. Impressionnant.

Duguay participated in 1985 in a radiophonic project called Golgot(h)a, a composition by Walter Boudreau. Let’s face Atlantide first. The texts used for those ideas are not at all noticeable in the music any more, but are completely transformed into the music. In this way they became dissolved by the musical concept. The overall atmosphere is one of a going back into a strange world, which starts from a chaotic but exotic structure, until it finds its peace in it.

The ideas behind the project came forth from all collected readings from Edgar Cayce which referred to the pre-existence of Atlantis. These readings all warned us in a way not to be lead by power once more and not to fall in self-destructive one-mindedness thinking any more that can lead to a pseudocommunal system that give rise to so many selfdefensing mechanisms that the world itself can get into danger by it.

The piece was dedicated to Charles Berlitz, author of books on Atlantis, and Jacques Boucher, and was commissioned by Société Radio-Canada. It received the special Jury Price in the Prix Italia in 1985.

The second piece is based upon inspiration by the Golgotha “as the representation of the drama of a human being confronted with the ineluctable. This long tunnel, of total darkness is a terrible funaral march of a man condemned to a horrible ordeal: the crucifiction.” Unfortunatly this experience is done with many destructive tones and atmospheres, where the purity of the soul in the middle that might even have found its inner piece within its desperate situation has not been expressed or even thought over. In that way it is indeed the confrontation of a common human being in this situation, facing hell directly in all its possible reflections. But even then I can’t believe in such an approach, bringing in mind some Italian horror movies where even the sadest and scariest moments contained some beauty.

OK. Let’s face this cruelty then. Destructive magical words (with amplified voice into horror), obtruded blasphemous trumpets spread their abuse to the unbearable. In my life I heard many contemporary compositions (Stockhausen, Xenakis, Ligeti…), difficult Free Jazz… but within what I heard this piece has too much destructive power in it. There’s no light in it. It truly is the total darkness. A destructive power towards the inner self. It’s not even a power that can cross that border or stand for itself on its own. This second piece received the Prix Paul Gibson in 1991 from the Communauté des Radios Publiques de Langue Française.

empreintes DIGITALes est le fer de lance de la musique électroacoustique au sens où Metamkine pourrait la définir. Dirigé par Jean-François Denis, il est partagé avec SONARt qui lui distingue davantage les créations instrumentales de studio. Chez empreintes DIGITALes, le radicalisme esthétique est une constante, plaçant d’emblée les productions du label au rang d’objet d’art. Un soin apporté aux pochettes et aux disques, qui sonne comme un engagement quasi éthique, si ce n’est idéologique. Toute cette génération de curieux trouve à présent un réel épanouissement, mûrissement de quelques années de pratiques laborieuses, de doutes successifs, dans le jeu de la construction de leur univers respectif. On peut ajouter l’influence de l’école française concrète (Schaeffer) référence évidente et revendiquée, notamment par Jonty Harrison, même s’ils s’inscrivent en réaction à l’académisme, à l’hermétisme et à la doctrine de la technique. Ces auteurs ont le mérite de considérer l’époque pour elle-même et non à travers des mythologies douteuses ou fantasmées.

Born in 1946 in Longueuil, near Montréal (Canada), Yves Daoust started the piano at a young age. He began to produce sound tracks in his teens for amateur stage productions. At age 21 he was admitted at the Montréal Music Conservatory, in piano. Two years later he quit, turning to composition and studying with Gilles Tremblay. His discovery of musique concrète in the early 1970s made him realize that he had already done something similar. He learned the trades of film music and sound production with Maurice Blackburn and Norman McLaren at the National Film Board of Canada and spent two years at the GMEB in Bourges to complete his initiation to electroacoustics. Back in 1976 he worked a few years for the NFB.

His first real tape music piece was completed in 1979, at which time he quit the Board to become one of Quebec’s most important composer and promoter of electroacoustic music. He co-founded the ACREQ (an association for electroacoustic research) in 1978, assuming the duties of president for ten years. He teaches electroacoustic composition at the Quebec Music and Drama Conservatory.

Daoust’s music touches tape music, instrument and tape, live electroacoustics, and instrumental film music. His dreamy textures and sense of the narrative compensate for the rather classical plasticity of his sonic sculptures. His first tape composition, Quatuor, was awarded the Euphonie d’Or by the Bourges Festival in 1993. An influential teacher, Daoust left his mark on many younger Quebec composers such as Ned Bouhalassa and Daniel Leduc. His first album, Anecdotes, was released in 1991 on empreintes DIGITALes. A second, Musiques naïves, followed in 1998, and a third, Bruits, in 2001.