Gilles Gobeil: … dans le silence de la nuit…: reviews

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… dans le silence de la nuit…

Gilles Gobeil

… dans le silence de la nuit…

[… in the silence of the night…]

empreintes DIGITALes | IMED 0155 | 2001

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Review

by Alan Freeman in Audion #46 (UK), June 1, 2002 |752|


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Kritik

by Zipo in Auf Abwegen #32 (Germany), June 1, 2002 |509_3|


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Kritik

by M B in Testcard #11 (Germany), June 1, 2002 |504_6|


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Review

by Ed Pinsent in The Sound Projector #10 (UK), May 1, 2002 |493_3|


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Critique

by L C in Octopus #14 (France), May 1, 2002 |493_2|

“Avec de tels compositeurs, le Québec n’a sans doute jamais été aussi libre…”

C’est du Québec que nous proviennent ces quelques œuvres inspirées, grâce au label de Montréal empreintes DIGITALes… Si leur point commun réside dans l’utilisation d’un support musical électroacoustique, il est intéressant de constater les influences des musiques ambiant et ethno-ambient dans le travail rendu et dans l’évolution progressive qui régit les morceaux… Au Clair de terre de Robert Normandeau, correspondent des mouvements cinématiques faisant évoluer les thèmes au gré de mouvements spatiaux et spacieux comme le laisse entendre le titre… Souvent amené à travailler pour le théâtre, Robert Normandeau cultive dans sa musique le sens de la densité et un aspect très direct que nous susurrent les voix entremêlées de Erinyes

Voilà une téléportation sonore en bonne et due forme que n’interrompra pas le silence nocturne étayé par la musique de Gilles Gobeil… Un silence pesant et torturé par des ambiances crépusculaires, combinaison de torpeur et de violences soudaines, qui ralliera jusqu’aux amateurs de dark-ambiant par ses déclinaisons à la fois brutales et microtonales. Un rêve semi-éveillé qui s’emballe au fil des lectures émaillant le voyage… Marcel Proust, HG Wells, Jules Verne, les passagers de ce train fantôme se portent bien, merci pour eux…

Au terminus, Yves Daoust vous attend… Ses Bruits reflêtent sa ville, Montréal, perpétuellement traversés par des bribes de mots, les cris des enfants, des mouvements crissants furtifs, des mécanismes grinçants… les nuits, les jours, les lieux, calmes ou agités, sont revisités avec un appétit glouton… Daoust s’empare des sons plus qu’il ne les saisit afin de retranscrire l’environnement urbain qui l’entoure, dans toute sa luxuriante diversité. Avec de tels compositeurs, le Québec n’a sans doute jamais été aussi libre…


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Commentary

by Andrei in microsound (USA), April 20, 2002 |491_6|

“Some of the most satisfying electronic music I’ve heard in a while.”

Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 02:58:28 -0400
To: microsound <microsound@hyperreal.org>
From: Andrei <andrei@w…>
Subject: Gilles Gobeil

I picked up the two Gilles Gobeil CDs on empreintes DIGITALes last week and I have to say they are excellent. Some of the most satisfying electronic music I’ve heard in a while. Really seamless blend of subtle processing and all sorts of field recordings (lots of klangy sounds and factory/machinery type sounds). Very tastefully done, never falls into that contemporary electroacoustic trap where it’s like “great, here’s lots of granular synthesis.” His music seems to be guided a lot more by his vision rather than by technology. There are actually lots of moments in his music which remind me more of things like David Jackman’s Organum rather than “academic” electronic music. There’s a very “isolationist” vibe to his music.

His more recent pieces, which are featured on … dans le silence de la nuit…, seem to revolve a lot more around a quiet stillness which is upset by bursts of activity. I was kind of surprised by Traces a piece from ’85 on the older CD is a great sort of old school concrete type piece with lots of jarring juxtapositions.

I’m very happy to find that empreintes DIGITALes is proving wrong my long held, but kind of uninformed opinion that there hasn’t really been any good academic electronic music since the 70’s. And the electrocd.com site is really great. So many audio samples to check out. I probably wouldn’t have picked up the Gobeil discs if I hadn’t been able to check out the samples on their site.


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Critique

in Monotrains & Satellites (France), April 1, 2002 |490_5|

“Une belle invitation au pays des rêves sombres.”

Gilles Gobeil, né il y a 47 ans à Sorel est de cette génération qui a suivi les premiers tâtonnements de la musique concrète en France, avec Ferrari, Schaeffer ou Henry, les premières expériences à grande échelle de sleeping et de musique répétitive (Riley, La Monte Young, Conrad) et d’acousmatie (Bayle). Ses expériences ont accompagné sa scolarité et ses études universitaires (tout autant que les Beach Boys d’ailleurs… ). Sa réussite auprès de ses pairs (prix Ars Electronica, diverses récompenses), ses participations à de nombreux collectifs (GRM, GMEB) ont construit la personnalité de sa musique et son style. Un voyage onirique en 4 étapes qui puise ici largement son inspirations dans la littérature contamporaine (de Proust à Jules Verne, de Thomas Moore à HG Wells), des visions dépressives ou nostalgiques, oniriques ou anticipatives de voyages, qu’ils soient intérieurs ou géographiques. L’atmosphère général de l’album ne prête pas à rire, climat de tension permanente où l’on pense par moment à l’album de Faust et sa BO du Nosferatu de Murnau où aux ambiances de Morcook ou Lovecraft… L’utilisation d’ondes Martenot et de rupture violente comme sur un de ses précédents albums La mécanique des ruptures n’y étant pas étrangère. Une belle invitation au pays des rêves sombres.


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Kritik

by Rigobert Dittmann in Bad Alchemy #39 (Germany), February 1, 2002 |476|


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Review

in Side Line #38 (Belgium), January 3, 2002 |471_5|


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Review

by Paul Donnelly in Freq (UK), January 3, 2002 |471|

“… a dark territory where you can not predict what will happen next.”

These four journeys into the realms of electroacoustic music were first created in the composer’s Montréal studio and subsequently revised into their current states. They draw on literary resources such as Proust, Jules Verne and HG Wells as well as images from Italian travel though I’m not sure that having that as background information is any help when listening, except on Projet Proust, a track where the narrative is drawn from the first pages of Swann’s Way.

For example, the partially visual images from which Derriere la porte la plus éloignée… takes its genesis are very specific, albeit images which are also rooted in sound. How then do they translate into Gobeil’s own sonic terrain? He lists “the trickling of the ‘pozzo etrusco’ in Perugia” and “the hum of the ‘vaporetto’ in Venice” among the sounds which inform the piece and, to me, they create an entirely different ambience to those realised in the composition. Whilst there are occasional ‘trickling’ or ‘humming’ sounds it is more suggestive of an unlit journey, punctuated by near and distant crashing, through a more threatening soundscape. It is never a dull one, however, and leads into his Proust influenced piece. The narrative voice of Marc Beland offers short passages amid the metallic drones and disturbances that form the territory of this track. It is described as a ‘personal reading’ of the Proust pages and, again, you can hear what you want in the sound, whether or not you are familiar with the text. At one point a ghostly choir and bells drift into the foreground only to be submerged by a welter of grinding metal. Later electronic birdsong floats past the narrator and more forlorn metals announce a distorted voice/instrument. That too is suddenly truncated as are many of the sections throughout the piece.

I suppose HG WellsThe Time Machine lends itself to the kind of ‘free adaptation’ that Gobeil has composed here on Point de passage. Again, it is a journey through a very metallic zone as the sounds speed up and slow down in a dark territory where you can not predict what will happen next. The final track Nuit cendre carries on the explorations of the previous track. The journey continues underground which, since it is an adaptation of A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, was to be expected. Gobeil constructs a threatening series of aural images and, as on all the other tracks, makes use of a variety of dynamics taking the listener from silence to dark rumblings in unfamiliar places. These troubled voyages are worth repeating because they draw the listeners in and allow them to make personal interpretations of what is happening. It may or may not correspond to your expectations or those suggested by the source material but in the end I don’t think that matters.


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Recensione

by Piero Manocchio in Deep Listenings #23:1 (Italy), January 1, 2002 |467_3|


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Critique

by G P in Nightlife #31 (Québec), January 1, 2002 |467_1|

“… une tension constante et un suspense aux penchants fantastiques…”

Inspiré de lectures (Proust, HG Wells et Jules Verne) ce deuxième disque de Gilles Gobeil dans le registre électroacoustique alterne entre les sons quasi silencieux et les explosions orageuses. L’auditeur devient alors un funambule qui se promène sur un mince fil sonore bousculé par des bourrasques de vents. On retient une tension constante et un suspense aux penchants fantastiques qui n’est pas sans évoquer la musique de film.


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Review

by Tom Schulte in Outsight (USA), December 16, 2001 |467|

“… Gobeil breaks ranks and offers sounds that are harsh and nightmarish.”

Gilles Gobeil is part of the rich, academic electroacoustic scene centered on the Université de Montréal. While much of the music from that fertile world is cerebral and engaging, Gobeil breaks ranks and offers sounds that are harsh and nightmarish. Three of the four works here are eerie creations based on Gobeil’s readings of Proust, HG Wells and Jules Verne. The fourth, Derrière la porte la plus éloignée… is a malevolent vision of Venice.


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Review

by Bart Plantenga in wReck thiS MeSS (The Netherlands), December 9, 2001 |465_3|

“… tightly wound gift-wrapped parcels of intense sonic phenomena.”

Dans le silence de la nuit on empreintes DIGITALes Gilles Gobeil is another veteran of that Montréal sound best described as tightly wound gift-wrapped parcels of intense sonic phenomena. The material has a way of exploding, of skulking, of waiting in silience, of groaning and mugging one’s preconceptions about the psycho-acoustic possibilities of music. The compositions seem at once well-yoked to the human need to control one’s environment and then just as suddenly the material seems to squirt out in splattering explosions of sonic fireworks as if the compositions have a built-in autonomous characteristic that allows them to exist as something in-between serious composition and sonic documents of the world at large… The works here are nightmarish evocations of his readings of Proust, HG Wells and Jules Verne. Derrière la porte la plus éloignée… is an impressionistic sonic illumination of Venice, Italy.


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Review

by Nicolas Chevreux in Recycle Your Ears (Germany), December 6, 2001 |464_9|

“… the most enjoyable, cinematic and listener-friendly CD I have heard…”

Before this CD, all the releases I knew from empreintes DIGITALes were very complex and difficult works of musique concrète and electroaccoustic. That is to say, they were clearly more a music for people who are actually studying this genre than for the rest of the world. Dans le silence de la nuit… is, to the contrary, a more accessible work, on which fans of industrial music can have more grip.

And, briefly said, these four tracks are a combination of dark soundscapes made of fields recordings, outbursts of noises and spoken words in French (with readings of Du coté de chez Swann and The time machine). As far as the music is concerned, this work doesn’t have the complexity and opacity of musique concrète, and sounds more like muffled and cut up recordings of footsteps, winds and ambiences, meshed into a rumbling light noise. In fact, the recording is often extremely light, causing you to crank up your stereo quite loud, before getting your ear blasted by some very dynamic and unexpected loud sample.

Very atmospheric and dream inducing, this work has enough coherency and consistency to be really enjoyed as a whole, and doesn’t lose his listener to much. The texture it uses are interesting and relatively close to sounds commonly used in dark ambient and industrial music. However, a very strong point of this CD is, as always with empreintes DIGITALes, a very good recording quality, with a dynamic and cristal clear sound.

Still very academic, but really close to what’s been done by some dark ambient projects, Dans le silence de la nuit… is easily the most enjoyable, cinematic and listener-friendly CD I have heard from this label. Nice.


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Review

by Darren Copeland in The WholeNote #7:4 (Canada), December 1, 2001 |464_5|

“… a drama of suspended tension and release using long building climaxes, quick jump cut edits, and eerie drones and lingering silences.”

The four works on this CD are each strongly compelling and immaculately produced. The production standards of recording and mixing are very high and put to effective compositional use, which is essential in any electroacoustic work. There is also a carefully conceived unity of materials and gestures that give the works a strong structural foundation.

Over that solid technical basis, Gobeil sets out to create a drama of suspended tension and release using long building climaxes, quick jump cut edits, and eerie drones and lingering silences. However, these benchmarks of his dramatic language are used so frequently from piece to piece that their desired impact is unjustly compromised by predictability. Gobeil’s unity of style and materials is so complete and unvaried that even the three diverse literary points of inspiration used for the works (Marcel Proust, HG Wells, and Jules Verne) fail to yield the potential variants in style, materials and form.

On a concert program including works by other composers, Gobeil’s music can stand beyond the rest and lead the listener on a hair-raising journey. But heard one after another in succession the impact is marginal. Therefore, I recommend listening to this CD in small concentrated doses separated by time and experience.


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Chronique

by Julien Jaffré in Jade (France), December 1, 2001 |464_3|

“Une belle invitation au pays des rêves sombres.”

Gilles Gobeil, né il y a 47 ans à Sorel, est de cette génération qui a suivi les premiers tâtonnements de la musique concrète en France, avec Ferrari, Schaeffer ou Henry, les premières expériences à grande échelle de sleeping et de musique répétitive (Riley, La Monte Young, Conrad) et d’acousmatie (Bayle). Ses expériences ont accompagné sa scolarité et ses études universitaires (tout autant que les Beach Boys, d’ailleurs…). Sa réussite auprès de ses pairs (prix Ars Electronica, diverses récompenses), ses participations à de nombreux collectifs (GRM, groupe de musique électroacoustique de Bourges) ont construit la personnalité de sa musique et son style. Un voyage onirique en quatre étapes qui puise ici son inspiration largement dans la littérature contemporaine (de Proust à Jules Verne, de Thomas Moore à HG Wells). Des visions dépressives ou nostalgiques, oniriques ou anticipatives de voyages, qu’ils soient intérieurs ou géographiques. L’atmosphère générale de l’album ne prête pas à rire, climat de tension permanente où l’on pense par moment à l’album de Faust et sa B.O. du Nosferatu de Murnau où aux ambiances de Morcook ou Lovecraft… l’utilisation d’ondes Martenot et de rupture violente comme sur un de ces précédents albums La mécanique des ruptures n’y étant pas étrangère. Une belle invitation au pays des rêves sombres.


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Review

by Jeremy Keens in Ampersand Etcetera #2001_20 (Australia), December 1, 2001 |464_001|

“… these 4 pieces create a strong sense of place and narrative…”

The four tracks on Gobeil’s disk have been well received in competitions around the globe, and are each based around narrative - personal or literary. One of the difficulties of this form of music, other than the complexity in trying to describe it, is the piercing punctuation - a tendency to signal the start or end of passages by loud, aggressive noises (a subcategory of the overall interest in wild volume changes). Gobeil uses this dramatic underlining extensively - which can get annoying, but does give the disk a unity, as some of the sounds (door slamming, bangs) are used across the tracks.

Derrière la porte la plus éloignée combines and manipulates sounds from a trip to Italy into an abstraction: a throb, breathing, violin and whirlys /bang/ a susurrus, train, tones, violin, dripping water increasing, throbbing /bang/ walking, drips and horn getting loud /loud passage/ trains (probably) seguing into tones / rhythmic elements, walking, talking, tones, increasing breathing, ringing noises build into a big visceral accretion of sound, then a little ringing and fade. A dense dreamlike Italy. The punctuation is even stronger in Projet Proust where sentences from the opening of the novel are read, accompanied by light electroacoustics, then followed by concretions which are probably related to the text, the punctuation playing the role of a full-stop at the end of an auditory sentence. Some sounds are domestic - a kitchen, with water running, a choir in a church, insects or a train - while others are tones, whistles, crackles and bangs. The piece flows smoothly, and complements my own memories of those early sections - balancing the comfortable domestic with Marcel’s night fears.

Following the literary theme, Point de passage is a version of WellsTime Machine and again matches my memory. Throughout there is a rhythm and tone from machinery, mainly steam, reflecting the steam age that produced the novel. The piece swings between an active mechanical period with knocking and sirens into a more lyrical central section, chatterings and vents, soft tones, rainfall and flutes, and finally another noisey building of buzzing machines and jackhammers, rising and falling to a slammed conclusion. Nuit cendre adapts Verne’s Journey To The Centre Of The Earth and isn’t at all like Rick Wakeman! It swoops between quiet subterranean rumbles or slow drones and tones into bangings and dense bellringing or distressed voices, sounds rising and falling like stalagmites and stalactites, excitement and awe at the underground landscape. Complex and difficult works, these 4 pieces create a strong sense of place and narrative, and deserved the awards they won.


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Review

in Metamorphic Journeyman (UK), November 21, 2001 |463_5|

“… a trip you won’t forget!”

Gilles Gobeil invites us to his haunting imaginary world. 4 works takes us on an unbelievable dream (or is it a nightmare?). True to his style, Gobeil’s music is rich with evocative moods. It’s a continuous sonic thriller. Beware, we certainly don’t know where this music will take us. Projet Proust, Point de Passage, and Nuit cendre were all inspired by Gobeil’s readings (Proust, HG Wells, and Jules Verne). Derrière la porte la plus éloignée… will show you Venice like you’ve never seen it before. All aboard with Gilles Gobeil on a trip you won’t forget!


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Review

by Ingvar Loco Nordin in Sonoloco Record Reviews (Sweden), October 29, 2001 |456|

“… one of the most talented and sensitive jugglers of sounds we’ve heard.”

When you peer into the electroacoustic antecedents of Gilles Gobeil you encounter the names of well-known as well as more obscure organizations throughout the genre which have all rendered him awards; Biennal Acousmatic Composition Competition (Belgium), International Electroacoustic Music Contest (Brazil), Ciber@rt (Spain), Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition (France), Stockholm Electronic Arts Award (Sweden), Ars Electronica (Austria), Luigi Russolo International Competition (Italy), Newcomp Computer Music Competition (USA), Brock University Tape Music Competition (Canada) and so on and so forth. Impressing! Undoubtedly, this wizard of the electronics, spinning all around his hat, is amply worthy of all this havoc, because he is one of the most talented and sensitive jugglers of sounds we’ve heard.

His new CD is one of a batch of new issues from the prolific empreintes DIGITALes of Canada, wherein we can monitor the present vibrancy out of his creative act. The works presented were conceived between 1995 and 2001, so we are provided with new music, which is always very interesting, since all acts of creativity, throughout the arts, are mirrors of our present day life and the position and state of humanity and affairs of the moment! The similarity between visiting a modern arts gallery down the street and listening to a new CD with electroacoustics is striking. It is often about shapes, shadings, light, movements, contours - and… associations. The richer one’s own scope of references and the wider our frames of reference, the richer and more rewarding our experiences of art. That experience, in its more evolved stages, doesn’t come for free. It takes initial time and effort, but as Pete Seeger once sang in a song called “Maple Syrup Time”: “Everything worthwhile takes a little time”. The electroacoustic village is pretty sparsely populated, even though worldwide - interconnecting through the Internet - we’re a growing bunch. For the newcomer it’s all about finding a way into the soundscape, and it might be all too easy for someone completely unaware of the electroacoustic goings-on to just bump off the surface, on hearing these weird sounds… However, in later years there seems to have been an up-surge of the idiom, hopefully indicating a wider public interest too, and an uncanny assortment of very good electroacoustic releases have helped pave the way. empreintes DIGITALes constitutes one of the main outlets of high quality sound art, and this CD by Gilles Gobeil is no exception.

Derrière la porte la plus éloginée… (“Behind the Remotest Door…”) (1998) presents a few images from a journey through Italy. A deep murmur opens the piece, harboring sounds as of a deep, slow breath. Jingle jangle wrenchings are inhaled, exhaled, as if you were deep inside the belly of the monster, or maybe hid away on an old wooden bench in a dark corner of a cathedral or age-old church… The liberating sound of running, trickling water refreshes for a while… but suddenly the echo of the sounds indicates a much smaller space, and you hurry in flight down stinking sewers. A sound as of an elevator maybe means that you’re reaching safety, but an enormous, dense factory wall of noise holds you back… A richness of timbre and of millions of grains of sound suddenly halts, as a distant propeller airplane sound is detected from a distance, in the sudden silence. Once again the sounds hit head on, like someone just pushed a button or pulled a lever, but then again this music could be an illustration to the travels after death, through the bewildering landscapes of Karma that are described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead… so just aim for the Light, and fear not these grim faces staring at you from the walls, these murky hands reaching out at you from the slimy corners, because they’re just remnants of bad deeds, manifestations of ill thoughts… so hold on to the best within yourself and aim fearlessly ahead…

Projet Proust (1995, 2001) is “a personal reading” of the first pages of Du côté de chez Swann (“Swann’s Way”) (1913) by Marcel Proust. The narrator is Marc Béland. In a classical electroacoustic manner, the voice of the narrator is heard as from inside soothing spheres of bliss, whereas the sound web in which those spheres of French morphemes are expressed is ominous, spatial, dark, threatening, as from a furnace of destruction or the core of energy on the verge of exploding into a supernova of the intellect, spreading your desperate identity in a dissipation of fragmented thoughts and remnants of words throughout the abyss within… Like in the first piece on the CD the sounds at times start behaving in an inhaling/exhaling manner, indicating Time through Breath, Life through moving Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide. Chanting of angelic choruses are hallucinated through the whining of bee swarm timbres and the occasional occurrences of grinding machines in a large, smoky hall of a steelworks on the Baltic coast, into which diagonal rays of sunlight through semi-transparent windows on high cut through the rising smoke and hovering dust of iron particles, producing rhombs and squares of light on the dirty brick walls and the littered floor, and on the hell-like machinery of industrialization… Minuscule binary progressions of grains of sand wisp back and forth in the panning of the artisan’s tools, as cut up blisters of cries and hollers are ground down to oblivion, until one short second of a real-life scream plummets into water and relative silence… and the softness of speech continues… Nocturnal atmospheres are introduced, from silent Mediterranean nights of dark heat, wherein insects talk to themselves… but is this also a regression of evolution, back to dinosaur pastures of plenty, where the grass is green and where the giants of the earth rule…? … because I hear growlings of primeval forests and plains… or is it just the Unconscious in fast reverse, down the branchery of evolution inside the halls of mirrors of my mind…?

Point de passage (“Crossing Point”) (1997) is, says Gobeil, “a free adaptation of ‘The Time Machine’ (1895) by HG Wells (1866-1946)”. It begins in a furious speed, accelerating in volume, but dissipates into - once again - a “breathing” state of relative silence… Anyone who has read the book by Wells knows and remembers the story, so this is supposed, then, to be programmatic music, re-enacting the story of the British scientist who invented a time machine and went to a distant future - 800 000 years ahead! - where humanity was divided into a naïve and innocent breed (the Eloi) living on the surface of the planet like we do, and a dark, evil and intelligent breed (the Morlochs) residing beneath the ground, in tunnels and halls deep inside the earth, appearing on the surface only to abduct the fair and gentle ones, tearing them apart for the sake of their flesh. Of course, the plot is inspired by the findings of Sigmund Freud and his concept of the Subconscious and the Unconscious, and particularly the sexual and creative implications for the individual, who has to balance the surge and might of millions of years of evolution - tucked away in his unconscious - on a razor’s edge of civil varnish.

There is a lot of movement in this piece; rushing sounds as from haywire subway trains, and I can feel the cold steel of the evil subterraneans’ machinery, and the smell of oil and fuel… A cold rain is falling over the steel dome into which the scientist has pulled his time machine… These sounds from Gobeil’s fantasy are immensely lonely, as from a god who has given up his supremacy… A slow breath, on the verge of snoring, pictures this god asleep in his loneliness.

Nuit cendre (1995) is the last piece. Again Gilles Gobeil has turned to a classical science fiction novel; Voyage a centre de la terre (“A Journey to the Center of the Earth”) (1864) by Jules Verne (1828-1905), the originator of modern science fiction. Initial sounds are abrupt indeed, but soon you are taken into watery, descending swoops of motion, apparently inside some hollow place or craft, and the grinding force of a landslide or dark matter being shoved aside grows into a relentless noise of lithophonic qualities. Lighter metallic rings of timbres sooth for a while… Unusually withheld nuances of sound lurk in the crevasses of the passage… There is an ominous apprehension inside this music… and the tubular rhythms of machinery once again grows in intensity, albeit in softer, brownish timbres of clay and wet slices of soil, seeping down the outside of your listening sphere like venomous honey… It is undoubtedly a crude environment, dark with clay, granite and bedrock strata. The music moves in this environment with diamond edge and boring vibrations… but the sounds of air through vents or steam through pipes transform the event into a softer impression, and suddenly it feels as though the space opens up, perhaps into a giant subterranean hall, so large and extended that you cannot see the roof up there in the dark, even though you point your torchlight upwards… and then you see it; a low-intensity, bluish light that sort of hovers inside the giant subterranean cathedral… Later on sounds of what appears to be thousands of winged creatures flapping about - maybe giant bats - sends fear down your spine, or are these sounds the stumbling feet of shadowy beings skipping towards you in your vulnerability, towards the core of the planet…?


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Review

by Richard di Santo in Incursion Music Review #038 (Canada), October 14, 2001 |454|

“… the kind of music that pulls the carpet from under your feet and sends you headfirst into an unsteady and nightmarish world.”

This new disc by Montréal based electroacoustic composer Gilles Gobeil picks up where his last disc, La mécanique des ruptures (also on empreintes DIGITALes), left off. It presents four compositions from 1995 through 2001. The first piece, Derrière la porte la plus éloignée… (1998) is punctuated by deep, broad and dynamic breaths. The piece undergoes a series of dramatic and earth-shattering changes, revealing an incomprehensible intensity and concentration of sound similar in spirit to what I found on his previous record. The next three pieces take their inspiration from works of fiction. Projet Proust (1995, 2001) incorporates a reading of the first few pages of Proust’s Du côté de chez Swann (Swann’s Way) with a constantly shifting sound field. Point de passage (1997) is an adaptation of HG WellsThe Time Machine, but there is no narration; instead the adaptation is manifested with pure sound, strange machinery and metallic clamouring. The fourth and final piece is based on Jules Verne’s Voyage au centre de la terre (Journey to the Centre of the Earth), having found its inspiration in Verne’s fantastic accounts of the underworld. Gobeil’s vision as seen through these four compositions is characteristically dark and surreal. The dynamic and shifting nature of his sounds is truly remarkable; they occupy a broad trajectory on the stereo spectrum, and seem reach out from their confines into the space around you. This is difficult listening, the kind of music that pulls the carpet from under your feet and sends you headfirst into an unsteady and nightmarish world. So it’s not for everyone, nor is it for everyday listening, but it’s a fascinating trip nonetheless. Nicely done.


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Critique

by Roald Baudoux in Les Cahiers de l’ACME #205 (Belgium), October 1, 2001 |923|


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Review

by François Couture in All-Music Guide (USA), September 1, 2001 |440|

“… his technique of violent contrasting has been pushed to farther extremes.”

This second CD by Gilles Gobeil develops a more literary theme, with three of the four pieces taking their inspiration in Marcel Proust, HG Wells, and Jules Verne. Yet, the composer’s style changed very little since the late-’80s/early-’90s pieces found on La mécanique des ruptures. If anything, his technique of violent contrasting has been pushed to farther extremes. Therefore … dans le silence de la nuit… (…In the Silence of Night…) sounds like more of the same. But again, the technique has been refined and where there used to be a flooring of textures now the listener often finds complete silence. The closing piece, Nuit cendre, gets very disturbing in this vein. Projet Proust is an electroacoustic interpretation of the first pages from the author’s mammoth cycle, accompanied by a pure (as in “not altered”) narration. Point de passage, an interpretation of Wells’ novel The Time Machine features more abrupt shifts and unexpected bangs. That is the crux of Gobeil’s art -- truly a case of love-it-or-hate-it.


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Recensione

by Luca Pagani in All About Jazz Italy (Italy), April 1, 2001 |385_5|

Raccolta che potremmo dire più letteraria che strettamente musicale. Si parte infatti con un viaggio in terra d’Italia, vedendo il pozzo etrusco di Perugia, i vaporetti di Venezia, la cattedrale di Torcello, la chiesa di Santa Maria della Salute. Certo, per chi non ha la possibilità di leggere le note dell’autore è un tantino complesso identificare le immagini sonore di Derrière la porte la plus éloignée… con quei luoghi turistici, tuttavia un’atmosfera e un ambiente ben preciso sono evocati all’interno della narrazione sonora. Gilles Gobeil non intende costruire la composizione tramite elementi né realistici né concreti: l’autore intende proporre invece un immaginario delle proprie sensazioni dalla vista dei paesaggi, dal ricordo che ne ha, ma in nessun caso si propone una descrizione realistica o fotografica degli avvenimenti. Solo per la cronaca, la composizione è stata presentata per la prima volta al Festival FIMAV (Festival International de musique actuelle) di Victoriaville (Canada).

La seconda traccia, Projet Proust è una rilettura personale (la voce narrante è di Marc Béland) delle prime pagine del romanzo Du coté de chez Swann (in italiano “La strada di Swann”) dello scrittore francese Marcel Proust. Alla narrazione si sovrappongono assemblaggi di varia natura, canti gregoriani mischiati ai rumori che più sovente vengono utilizzati in questi ambiti, ovvero i bruits delle stazioni ferroviarie. Il metodo nel comporre i suoni che è stato utilizzato in questo caso ricorda il “Ritratto di città” realizzato da Luciano Berio e Bruno Maderna. Il tono della narrazione in un certo senso dimesso, la musica che tende a sottolineare gli aspetti “psicologici” del racconto, sono elementi che legano l’opera di Gilles Gobeil al citato lavoro dei due compositori italiani.

Da questo punto in poi la raccolta parte verso i territori della letteratura fantascientifica con l’adattamento musicale e l’interpretazione “libera” di The Time Machine (in italiano “La macchina del tempo”), romanzo dello scienziato-scrittore Herbert George Wells. Point de passage si svolge con tratti più discontinui rispetto alle precedenti tracce anche a causa delle innumerevoli fonti sonore da cui la composizione prende spunto. Ancora una volta rumori catturati dagli ambiti ferroviari, ma anche dall’ambiente naturale (tuoni e pioggia) accompagnate da un maggiore utilizzo delle elaborazioni elettroniche (drones di media durata, rumori manipolati a tal punto da assomigliare al suono di un synth).

Si giunge così alla fine del percorso con la visione dei mondi sotterranei di Voyage au centre de la terre (“Viaggio al centro della terra”) di Jules Verne. Come è facile immaginare i suoni che l’autore utilizza in Nuit cendre sono talvolta praticamente inudibili (frequenze bassissime), talvolta vere e proprie “esplosioni”, cornici e contorni. È abile ancora una volta Gobeil ad rileggere l’opera, a renderla “sua”, attuale e - cosa più difficile - a trasporla dalla letteratura all’ambito sonoro. Anche per questo motivo siamo riusciti nella difficile impresa di scriverne.

Valutazione: ****


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Jury Statement

by Berndt Berndtsson, Juraj Duris, Kaija Saariaho in Stockholm Electronic Arts Award (Sweden), September 1, 1997 |246_5|

“A musically expressive piece of the highest quality…”

Nuit cendre: A musically expressive piece of the highest quality where the composer, with admirable economy of means, transports us through acoustic environments which are sometimes reverential, sometimes terrifying.

Through an interplay of sounds from daily life and synthesized material he makes us aware of the conflict of realities in life in an industrial society.

The natural sounds have been transformed so as to acheive a kinship with the synthesized sounds, a kinship which the composer uses deftly to attain his aesthetic goals.

The acoustic material is used to build up clear musical gestures with a refined and sensitive ear. Musical intensity is not created with heavy sound masses, as so often in electroacoustic music, but through precise compositional interplay of contrasting elements.

The general impression is one of skill, sensitivity and awareness of the value of surprise.


other texts in

  • Black #26 (Germany), December 1, 2001
  • Skug #49 (Austria), January 1, 2002
  • The Wire #216 (UK), February 1, 2002
  • Circuit #12:3 (Québec), September 1, 2002

Gilles Gobeil: … dans le silence de la nuit…: reviews

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