electrocd

Review

Stewart Gott, Flux Europa, 1 avril 2001

A recording that kicks off with shrill tinkling comparable to Maryanne Amacher’s Sound Characters and comes to a dramatic conclusion reminiscent of Come to Daddy period Aphex Twin clearly knows no barriers. From classical, to noise, to avant-garde mouth music, to drum ’n’ bass, the genres and sub-genres are all represented here, thick and fast on each other’s heels in a glorious welter of exquisitely produced sound.

The young Canadian composer Louis Dufort has a fascination with cinema and a history of involvement with contemporary dance that in part explains the extraordinarily visual nature of his work. This is nowhere more true than the remarkable Pointe-aux-Trembles, the second of the four pieces presented here, which gives a vivid picture of Montréal oil refineries glittering against the night sky. A marvellous sense of movement and depth is given in the exhilarating shifts from noise to silence and back again. This is industrial music at its best, demanding total concentration. Elsewhere Zénith sounds like Edgar Varèse on acid, all billowing sheets of electronics and feverish incantations, uneasy and ethereal. Transit thumps and nags in disjointed throbs that come together cogently. Décap, with its Stimmung gabbles, its furious shouts and growls, its Wagnerian bluster, its frenetic rhythms that drop over an abyss into edgy silences, is totally unnerving.

An education for the ears and a tonic for the mind, a chance to see clear visions with your eyes shut tight.

An education for the ears and a tonic for the mind…