[va]: eXcitations (CD): track detail

electroradio

eXcitations

[va]: (sampler)

eXcitations

empreintes DIGITALes | IMED 0050 | 2000

CD out of print

imed_0050-1 |

1. Espace / Escape (1989) 2m50s imed_0050-1.1 | 14272 | ISRC CAD500013870

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Francis Dhomont

Commission: Claude Schryer / The Banff Centre for the Arts, with support from the CCA

Premiere: November 11, 1989, >convergence<, The Banff Centre for the Arts (Banff, Alberta, Canada)

To Jean-François Denis and Claude Schryer

“As soon as we become immobile, we are elsewhere; we dream in a vast world. Immensity is the movement of immobile man. Immensity is one of the dynamic aspects of peaceful daydreaming.”

Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

Space.

Open, intimate, confused spaces. Broken spaces, whirling.

Indecisive edges of the space.

Space-refuge, enclosed, maternal, space of reminiscence and of associations.

Tumult or murmur in the space of a thousand reflections.

Escape.

The flight engenders a vertigo of multiple elsewheres.

Here… There…

Attempted encounter of heterogeneous elements related by two criteria: one is sonic and denotative (the place of sound in space), the other symbolic and connotative (referring to the theme of wandering), both alluding to movement. These criteria determine the form and are its cement. The multiplicity of materials embody the ideas of ‘space’ and ‘mobility.’ This work integrates into its structure active elements of spatialization which have a semantic value.

[ix-91]

[Excerpt taken from the disc Cycle de l’errance, IMED 9607]

2. Zénith (1999) 1m55s imed_0050-1.2 | 13796 | ISRC CAD500013880

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Louis Dufort

Premiere: November 6, 1999, Usine C (Montréal, Québec)

The formal expansion of form

Rupture/Catharsis

[Excerpt taken from the disc Connexion, IMED 0051]

3. Le renard et la rose: Babillage et rythme 3m17s imed_0050-1.3 | 23817 | ISRC CAD500013890

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Robert Normandeau

[Excerpt taken from the disc Figures, IMED 9944]

4. Breathing Room (1990) 2m33s imed_0050-1.4 | 14254 | ISRC CAD500013900

Listen (excerpt)

Premiere: November 2, 1990, Montréal musiques actuelles / New Music America, Théâtre Les Loges (Montréal, Québec)

This is the second in a series of Breathing Room pieces. Music as breath-like nourishment. Breathing as nourishing musical space. The breath — my breath — is heard throughout the three minutes. All sorts of musical/acoustic things happen as I breathe in and out. Each breath makes its own, unique statement, creates a specific place in time. Meanwhile the heart beats on, propelling time from one breath to the next.

Hildegard Westerkamp [xi-90]

[Excerpt taken from the disc Électro clips, IMED 9604]

5. Racing Through, Racing Unseen (1996) 2m57s imed_0050-1.5 | 14388 | ISRC CAD500013910

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Natasha Barrett

Commission: empreintes DIGITALes

Racing Through, Racing Unseen contains, in condensed form, the impetus behind its 20-minute long parent work, Racing Unseen. / Racing through, / Racing amongst, / Into new spaces, / Away from old emotions, / Racing high, racing low, / to escape, to seek, / racing into eddy… racing forever… racing unseen.

This sonic postcard takes a snapshot from the south side of Blackfriar’s Bridge, a stone’s throw along the footpath to the Royal Festival Hall. This clip can be coupled as a epilogue to St Paul’s Descending into the Autumn Mist. It embodies an impressionistic and personal development of the sound-world, listening towards the distant image of St Paul’s Cathedral. It attempts to capture the bare essence behind the original sound-world: thoughts and emotions as they are washed up onto the score of the River Thames. [ii-98]

[Excerpt taken from the disc Miniatures concrètes, IMED 9837]

6. L’ivresse de la vitesse (1992-93) 2m10s imed_0050-1.6 | 13899 | ISRC CAD500013920

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Paul Dolden

Premiere: May 28, 1994 (London, England, UK)

The title L’ivresse de la vitesse (Intoxication by Speed) is an allusion towards my current artistic intentions which involve the speeding up of an excess of musical ideas so that the composition and its materials exhaust themselves in the shortest time possible. The intoxicating aspect of speed is evoked by using primarily fast tempo markings and rapid changes in orchestration, density and dynamics. These elements can be particularly sped up to the point of exhaustion and intoxication in the digital audio studio which is limitless or ‘virtual’ in its colour and density possibilities.

To increase the sensation of exhaustion and intoxication, hundreds of musical parts occur simultaneously that are organized by numerous musical systems which unfold concurrently. A few of these musical systems originate in different styles of popular music. These musical styles are organized by an overall compositional language and style in order to diffuse their direct effect or reference point, and to create an internally coherent music. This overall compositional language is intended to make the different musical styles and compositional systems implode inwards, creating new identities beyond their worn-out historical reference points, and to produce what I hope is like seduction: undeniably attractive and yet simultaneously unexplainable. Indeed any work that is totally complicit in its own absorption, so that it no longer makes apparent sense on the surface, will exercise a remarkable fascination. In short, an art work fascinates by its esotericism which preserves it from external logic.

[Excerpt taken from the disc L’ivresse de la vitesse, IMED 9917/18]

7. Tao: Bois (1986) 2m09s imed_0050-1.7 | 14149 | ISRC CAD500013930

Listen (excerpt)

Premiere: August 14, 1986 (Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône, France)

To Marie-Jeanne Wyckmans

•• Imitation/development: Based on proliferation and brassage [‘stirring up’ in French, is a sound processing function of the SYTER system], Bois (Wood) is part of a broader investigation into nature as model, a very old process of the human mind that has recently regained popularity via computer modelling in computer graphics for example.

Each movement starts with an image-model whose energy flow system will later be expanded: repeated blows of a tree being felled, endless rotation of a mill, swinging/swaying of a ping pong game.

•• Symbol: The felling and the death of a tree as a symbol of the forest, of Nature being truly murdered. “Miller, you are asleep…” and the world is turning crazily in Your absence.

•• Form: While the first part maintains and directs listening in a linear fashion, the second opens the space and the third superimposes a polyphonic proliferation of oscillating materials in all fields of perception (registers, durations, matters, movements, spaces), and ends after a moment of stillness by taking up again the two other energy models, again in a polyphonic fashion. The whole is an attempt to transpose the tree morphology in time.

•• Anecdote: The door (an electroacoustic cliché since Pierre Henry) opens and closes the book of Bois whose story is told between the cutting down and the fall of the tree.

•• Spatialization: This piece is played in fast, rich, abundant, and ‘stirred up’ movements. Everything moves, except the images. A relatively complex multiphonic device, with a minimum of twelve loudspeakers, is therefore essential.

[xii-93]

[Excerpt taken from the disc Tao, IMED 9311]

8. Associations libres (1990) 1m48s imed_0050-1.8 | 14250 | ISRC CAD500013940

electric guitar, and tape

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Gilles Gobeil

Performer: René Lussier, electric guitar

Commission: René Lussier, with support from the CCA , empreintes DIGITALes

Premiere: November 2, 1990, Montréal musiques actuelles / New Music America, Théâtre Les Loges (Montréal, Québec)

This piece was born of the desire after fifteen years, to collaborate with the guitarist René Lussier. Using his talent for improvisation, I have employed the wide variety of timbres and sound matter from his interpretation. The tape consists of a succession of very dense and expressive scenes onto which the guitar’s living and playful gestures are placed.

Gilles Gobeil [xi-90]

[Excerpt taken from the disc Électro clips, IMED 9604, and from the disc La mécanique des ruptures, IMED 9421]

9. Musique de l’Odyssée sonore: Eau 1m21s imed_0050-1.9 | 14359 | ISRC CAD500013950

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Claude Schryer

The multiple voices of liquid

"At the time of the shaking of the earth, the city emerged from the bottom of the ocean and was always surrounded by water. No two drops of water sing the same note and every river has its own melody. In the winter season, the ice and snow bring to it a particular tonality.” 1

Transformed water: streams and creeks, Montmorency falls, Saint-Laurent river, summer rain and winter ice.

1 Excerpts from the narration of the film written by Georgette Duchaîne

[ix-97]

[Excerpt taken from the disc Autour, IMED 9736]

10. Aquí en Yucatán: Justicia 2m07s imed_0050-1.10 | 21164 | ISRC CAD500013960

Listen (excerpt)

[Excerpt taken from the disc Corazón Road, IMED 9946]

11. Vroum (1997) 1m35s imed_0050-1.11 | 14532 | ISRC CAD500013970

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Marc Tremblay

Premiere: May 1, 1997, Usine C (Montréal, Québec)

We are surrounded by objects whose importance is directly related to their utility. To one degree or another these object all have their own sounds, but as they become commonplace we tend to lose our ability to hear them. They become a part of the blurring of the sounds of everyday life.

The automobile is unquestionably one of the most important inventions of our century. They have changed our perception of time and space, and have come to dominate most of the soundscapes of our towns and our countryside.

Deliberately anecdotal, Vroum suggests a new way to hear that apotheosis of our age, the automobile.

[xii-99]

[Excerpt taken from the disc Bruit-graffiti, IMED 9949]

12. La guerre (1995) 2m11s imed_0050-1.12 | 14230 | ISRC CAD500013980

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Philippe Le Goff

La guerre (War) which follows is a dream-like war between appearance and that within, of which the weapon is vocal sound, that of the breath, of laughter and of words. The chants which I arranged, perforemed by Élise Caron and Valérie Joly, evolve towards a trance; they attempt to lose themselves in the sounds of the aurora borealis. The general atmosphere of this study is dominated by the variations of Arctic light.

With Élise Caron, Valérie Joly, voice; Patrick Rouch, Yves Stocker, Paul Tanguy, horn. And with the participation of: Luc Candardjis, tympani; Louis Chretiennot, electric guitar; Jean-Jacques Cornillon, shanaï; Pascal Dusapin, Hammond organ; Philippe Foch, percussion; Gilles Grand, saxophone; Schyamal Maïtra, tabla; Anna & Margaux, Olivier Cadiot, Eeleesapee Ishulutak, Mary Ann Issarkiark, Maaki Kakkik, Malaia Papatsi, Martha Sivuarapik, Laina Tullaugak, Eeeleesapee Tulugak & Tapisaq, voice. And with the farewells of the ornithological team of Tony Gaston on deserted Coat Island (Hudson Bay).

[i-95]

[Excerpt taken from the disc Titakti, IMED 9524]

13. Portrait d’un visiteur: 1er fragment 3m09s imed_0050-1.13 | 23690 | ISRC CAD500013990

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Christian Calon

[Excerpt taken from the disc Ligne de vie: récits électriques, IMED 9001]

14. Mambo à la Braque (1990) 2m05s imed_0050-1.14 | 14261 | ISRC CAD500014000

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Javier Álvarez

Commission: empreintes DIGITALes

Premiere: November 2, 1990, Montréal musiques actuelles / New Music America, Théâtre Les Loges (Montréal, Québec)

Like words made out of cutting letters from a newspaper, I have used in Mambo à la Braque (Braque-style Mambo) short musical segments which come from the well known mambo Caballo Negro by composer Dámaso Perez Prado to whom this short piece pays homage. I have reassembled them into a sound mosaic and used a few other sounds to ‘glue’ them together. My aim was to create a sort of cubist music, or put in other words, a mambo of my own invention made out of mambo cuttings.

Javier Álvarez [xi-90]

[Excerpt taken from the disc Électro clips, IMED 9604]

15. Suite Baroque: L’Extase 2m29s imed_0050-1.15 | 14108 | ISRC CAD500014010

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Yves Daoust

Love scene between the harpsichordist and her instrument.

[ix-91]

[Excerpt taken from the disc Anecdotes, IMED 9106]

16. Princess Bat with the Underground Stars (1996) 1m19s imed_0050-1.16 | 14403 | ISRC CAD500014020

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Kim Hedås

Commission: empreintes DIGITALes

Why these three sounds, why three minutes, why one part of 15 seconds and one of 2 minutes 45? For me, these rules didn’t make any sense. I began to invent my own explanations, trying different techniques to connect material and form in order to give them musical significance. The sound material I added was, together with the three given sounds, divided into six classes and in the piece used as parts of the polyphonic structure. The form can be described as a slowly changing wave or, as the title implies, as a flying bat with the stars beneath. It was produced in the electroacoustic studio at the Royal University College of Music in Stockholm.

[Excerpt taken from the disc Miniatures concrètes, IMED 9837]

17. … et ainsi de suite…: à propos 1m34s imed_0050-1.17 | 23746 | ISRC CAD500014030

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Jonty Harrison

[Excerpt taken from the disc Articles indéfinis, IMED 9627]

18. The Unmoved Centre (1997) 1m28s imed_0050-1.18 | 14529 | ISRC CAD500014040

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Randall Smith

Commission: Réseaux des arts médiatiques, with support from the CCA

Premiere: February 19, 1997, Rien à voir (1), Réseaux, La Chapelle (Montréal, Québec)

The Unmoved Centre is a sonic realization of the poetics of spiritual mobility, a journey into the center of the imaginative image. This invitation into the imagination is a gentle push into the unknown which throws us off balance and sets in motion a dynamic reverie towards ambiguity and metaphor. Rather than represent exterior realities and actions, this piece analogizes them to trace the process of its own making. The title refers to that informed pool of possibilities which seeks shaping, and whose structure lies finally beyond the bounds of the individual. The dramatic focus of The Unmoved Centre is the transformation from outer to inner existence. It is a play of forces that map the body’s spiritual struggles as it searches for its tunings within the manageable and imaginable. It is found in a sphere of connected, conflicting and harmonious sounds.

The Unmoved Centre opens with rumour and suggestion, the possibility of form. A tender string figure introduces order, and then these elements, so long distant and apart, begin to speak to one another in earnest, rhythmically cohering, forming bodies. A trilling, snycopated voice cries out for company which arrives in the form of a creaking succession of closed doors. Foreign life forces meet, like cells inside the immune system. Intruders are detected, repulsion’s attempted and thwarted, and then some pact of reconciliation is carved out. Thousand of small movements duck, nod and feint their way towards new signs of greeting — in the absence of a common language a new one must be made. At last a new unearthly rhythm arrives, a marriage of stretched strings and shaken antidotes. The dance begins again.

MH

[xii-99]

[Excerpt taken from the disc Sondes, IMED 9948]

19. Jets (1996-98) 1m53s imed_0050-1.19 | 14417 | ISRC CAD500014050

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Ned Bouhalassa

Jets was originally conceived for the sound projection system of San Francisco’s Sound Traffic Control (STC). I wanted to write a piece that could demonstrate the potential of automated sound projection. In order to make a dynamic and energetic piece, I chose to use jet-shaped materials. Water, air and dust jets that leave a trace as they move through space would serve as models for the creation of my sonic materials. There are objects in this piece which move freely, in an almost intuitive manner; others flee quickly, like hunted animals; finally, there are those that hurl themselves against the edges of the stereo field, as if they were in a cage. There is also a kind of nostalgia that is found in the more ‘musical’ passages that serves as a setting, as ambience.

[Excerpt taken from the disc Aérosol, IMED 9840]

20. Study in Ink (1997) 1m14s imed_0050-1.20 | 13807 | ISRC CAD500014060

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Composer: Adrian Moore

Premiere: 1997 (Aberdeen, Scotland, UK)

Study in Ink is a single-source piece: a recording of a marker pen on a whiteboard. Whilst writing on a whiteboard I noticed how, as the pen became dry, it began to make very interesting noises that could be used musically. (For many people this class of sounds is simply ‘noise’ to be avoided since the majority of the sounds of the marker pen lies within the 1,000 to 4,000 hertz frequency range; one of the more sensitive regions of hearing.)

After the initial source-recording process, the combination of tones and noises and their movement within the stereo field gave rise to quite complex material. With further equalization and sound treatment I obtained relationships of pitch, dynamics, speed and gesture. The pen moved from a wispy air-like sound through screeching tones and finally to a slip-grip grating sound. In developing this material, I turned to frequency-shifting to provide longer gestures over a wider frequency bandwidth. This hierarchy of gestures formed the basis of the work: long tones underpinning or overhanging smaller combinations of gestures.

The form of the work is centered upon moments of tension and relaxation, moments of joy and moments of sadness, but always tinged with a little humor. The fleeting gestures of the pen are contrasted with sections of imposed rigidity which include pulsed structures. The natural pitch-contour of the pen gives rise to some very human qualities such as sighing (descending gestures) and questioning (quick ascending gestures).

[ix-00]

[Excerpt taken from the disc Traces, IMED 0053]

21. Requiem: Dies Iræ 1m00s imed_0050-1.21 | 14158 | ISRC CAD500014070

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: Michel Chion

“On this day of wrath, what will I say?”

[Excerpt taken from the disc Requiem, IMED 9312]

22. … erinnerung… (1996) 2m33s imed_0050-1.22 | 14520 | ISRC CAD500014080

Listen (excerpt)

Premiere: November 26, 1996, Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt (Weimar, Germany)

In recent years the use of speech has been a central compositional concern. In … erinnerung… (… memento…) the recorded poem forms the starting point for acousmatic transformations. Apart from this text there is a second group of sources, which include bells and tam-tams. I used granular synthesis to cut the sounds into small pieces and played them back polyphonically to create dense sound textures. The resulting sonic intensity is a musical translation of the central phrase of the poem Yo os lo aseguro… (I assure you…) by Antonio Bueno Tubía: “I / assure you / the prison is there / I recall it like a lash to the face.”

[xii-99]

[Excerpt taken from the disc Moment, IMED 9947]

Die Verbindung von Sprache und Musik ist ein zentraler Bestandteil meiner Arbeit seit mehreren Jahren.

Auch in … erinnerung… wird der Text wieder zum Ausgangspunkt der Klangsuche indem er nicht nur als semantische Inspiration sondern auch als Ursprung für Klangverarbeitung dient. Den von der Aufnahme mit Antonio Bueno Tubía abgeleiteten Sprachklängen steht eine zweite Klangfamilie gegenüber: Glocken und Tam-Tams. Mit Hilfe der Granularsynthese, die einen Klang in Tausende kleiner Partikel zerteilt und nach vorgegebenen Parametern wieder zusammensetzt erzeuge ich extrem dichte Klangtexturen hoher Intensität, die für mich den Kernsatz des Textes Yo os lo aseguro… (Ich versichere es Euch…) widerspiegeln: „Ich / versichere es euch / das Gefängnis ist da / ich erinnere es wie einen Peitschenschlag in der Schläfe.“

[xii-99]

23. eXcitations (2000) 50s imed_0050-1.23 | 13785 | ISRC CAD500014090

Listen (excerpt)

Composer: various

[Mini-collage of mini-excerpts of the 22 excerpts from the sampler disc eXcitations, IMED 0050]

[va]: eXcitations (CD): track detail

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