Blog // Archive // By Date // 2010 // February

9 February 2010

On February 18, 2010 SCRIME is presenting two concerts at the Halle des Chartrons in Bordeaux (France) titled Bordeaux via Montréal. These will include, amongst others, four works — About Time, Nuit, Objets trouvés, and Le temps fixé — by Yves Daoust.

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8 February 2010
By Frans de Waard in Vital #717 (Netherlands), February 8, 2010

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“It’s a long compilation, which has some great music…”

Reviewing compilations is just something I don’t like very much. Not in the limited space each release gets within Vital Weekly. Perhaps one could write lengthy essays about various compilations, and this would perhaps be one. ZKM stands for Zentrum fur Kunst & Technology in Karlsruhe, a prestigious art and music centre. They invited a bunch of Canadian composers “to feature the outstanding creativity of Canadian electroacoustic music and to investigate the trends of its acoustmatics and soundscape composition.” We come across here some old masters like Francis Dhomont (who has a very nice piece based on spoken text of Franz Kafka), Robert Normandeau and Hildegard Westerkamp, along with pieces by Nicolas Bernier (the young man in this lot I believe), Darren Copeland, Louis Dufort, Gilles Gobeil and Barry Truax. The shortest piece(s) are around fifteen minutes, the longest almost thirty-five. Various deal with voices in German or in general. All presented on a DVD. So far the basics. The music is probably just about anything you would expect from an empreintes DIGITALes release. Heavily computer processed electroacoustics sounds. Time stretching, granular synthesis and such like. Sounds tumbling over each other, rolling in and out, nearby and far away. The best pieces are those which add something extra, like spoken word. The spoken words of Burroughs in Bernier’s piece, the Dufort piece or the aforementioned Dhomont piece. The Copeland piece is a a bit too long for me. It’s a long compilation, which has some great music, but also no real stand out pieces, I think. Surely nice enough.

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5 February 2010
By Sara Bracco in SentireAscoltare (Italy), February 5, 2010

Press Clipping

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3 February 2010
By François Couture in Monsieur Délire (Québec), February 3, 2010

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“I like these compilations, there’s always gems to be found…”

Every year, the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC) holds a competition for emerging sound artists called Jeu de temps / Time’s Play. Works selected are culled on a CD (among other benefits). I recently received the 2007 and 2008 editions of Cache, said series of CDs. I like these compilations, there’s always gems to be found among those little-known names (out of 2007 crop, I recognize only Olivier Girouard and James Duhamel; from Cache 2008, only Thierry Gauthier, and that’s because he’s been featured on previous installments). It’s not all great or particularly original music (in many cases, we’re knee deep into academic electroacoustics), but gems there are. Like Duhamel’s MIMIK and Dominic Thibault’s Nuit noire, nuit grise, or even Jean-François Blouin’s Catacombes (despite the obvious influence of Gilles Gobeil). These CDs sell for cheap, and you can listen to all tracks on the CEC website.

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1 February 2010

We suggest you check out Érosphère by François Bayle, the latest addition to our shop.

1 February 2010

No Type’s disc Les arbres by Nicolas Bernier was awarded the Prix Opus “Album of the year — actuelle and electroacoustic musics” at the 13th Gala Opus on January 31, 2010 in Montréal. Also of interest: Chorals ornés for organ and tape by Yves Daoust — and performed by Régis Rousseau — was awarded the Prix Opus “Premiere of the year.”

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