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Electroacoustics, the Quebecois Wayby François Couture in electrocd.com (Québec), March 22, 2004 »
“Quebecois electroacoustic music has earned a place in the hearts of avant-garde music
lovers everywhere…”
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right? Wrong — at least when it comes to electroacoustics, the beautiful province of Quebec compares very well to any other region of the world. Call me chauvinistic, I don’t care: Quebec is home to several composers of tremendous talent and influential professors. My goal is not to turn this article in an analytical essay, but, as a music reviewer and unstoppable listener, I am convinced that there is such a thing as Quebecois electroacoustics. Despite the stylistic variety among our composers, I detect a Quebecois “sound,” something that sounds to me neither British nor French or German; something that calls to me and speaks to me in a language more immediate and easier to understand. This “unity in diversity” is probably, at least in part, due to the lasting influence of a small number of key composers whose academic teachings have shaped our younger generations. I am thinking first and foremost of Francis Dhomont and Yves Daoust. So let’s begin this sound path with a Frenchman so Quebecois at heart that he was awarded a prestigious Career Grant from the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec. I can sincerely recommend all of Dhomont’s albums: his graceful writing, his narrative flair and his intelligence turn any of his works into fascinating gems. I have often publicly expressed my admiration for Forêt profonde (including in my first Sound Path, so I will skip it this time), but Sous le regard d’un soleil noir, his first large-scale work, remains an international classic of electroacoustic music, and his more recent Cycle du son shows how close to perfection his art has grown — the piece AvatArsSon in particular, my first pick for this Sound Path. If Dhomont’s music is often constructed following large theoretical, literary and sociological themes, Yves Daoust’s works lean more toward poetry and the anecdote. Most of his pieces betray his respect for the abstractionist ideals of the French school, but his seemingly naive themes (water, crowds, a Chopin Fantasia or a childhood memory) empower his music with an unusual force of evocation. His latest album, Bruits, also displays a willingness to grow and learn. One is tempted to hear the influence of his more electronica-savvy students in the startling title triptych. To those two pillars of Quebec electroacoustics, I must add the names of Robert Normandeau and Gilles Gobeil. Normandeau is a very good example of what I consider to be the “typical” Quebecois sound: a certain conservatism in the plasticity of sounds (the result of the combined influence of the British and French schools); great originality in their use; and an uncanny intelligence in the discourse which, even though it soars into academic thought, doesn’t rob the listener of his or her pleasure. My favorite album remains Figures, in part because of the beautiful piece Le Renard et la Rose, inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novel Le Petit Prince - and also because of Venture, a tribute to the Golden Age of progressive rock (a pet peeve I share with the composer, might I add). As for Gobeil’s music, it is the wildness of wilderness, the turmoil of human passions, the sudden gestures, the copious splashes of sonic matter thrown all around. If La mécanique des ruptures remains an essential listen, his most recent album Le contrat, a collaboration with guitarist René Lussier, stands as his most accomplished (and thrilling!) work to date. These four composers may represent the crème de la crème of academic circles, but empreintes DIGITALes’ catalog counts numerous young composers and artists whose work deeply renew the vocabulary of their older colleagues. I would like to mention Fractures, the just released debut album by Christian Bouchard. His fragmented approach seems to draw as much from academic electroacoustics as from experimental electronica. Thanks to some feverish editing and dizzying fragmentation, Parcelles 1 and Parcelles 2 evoke avant-garde digital video art. I also heartily recommend Louis Dufort’s album Connexions, which blends academic and noise approaches. His stunning piece Zénith features treatments of samples of Luc Lemay’s voice (singer with the death-metal group Gorguts). I am also quite fond of Marc Tremblay’s rather coarse sense of humor. On his CD Bruit-graffiti he often relies on pop culture (from The Beatles to children’s TV shows). His piece Cowboy Fiction, a “western for the ear” attempting to reshape the American dream, brings this Sound Path to a quirky end. Serious or facetious, abstract or evocative, Quebecois electroacoustic music has earned a place in the hearts of avant-garde music lovers everywhere. Now it is your turn to explore its many paths.
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Introduction(s) to the Delights of Electroacoustic Musicby François Couture in electrocd.com (Québec), October 15, 2003 »
Electroacoustic music is an acquired taste. Like it or not, radio and television have conditioned us from an early age into accepting some musical (tonal and rhythmical) molds as being “normal.” Therefore, electroacoustics, along with other sound-based (in opposition to note-based) forms of musical expression like free improvisation, is perceived as being “abnormal.” That’s why a first exposure to this kind of music often turns into a memorable experience — for better or worse. Many factors come into play, but choosing an album that offers an adequate (i.e. friendly and gentle) introduction to the genre will greatly help in letting the initial esthetic shock turn into an experience of Beauty and mark the beginning of a new adventure in sound. My goal with this sound path is simply to point out a few titles that I think have the potential to encourage instead of discourage, titles opening a door to a new musical dimension. Of course, this selection can only be subjective. But it might be helpful to new enthusiasts and to aficionados looking for gift ideas that would spread good music around. After all, Christmas is only a few weeks away! Bridges We usually develop new interests from existing interests. What I mean is: we explore music genres that are new to us because a related interest brought us there. That’s why when it comes to electroacoustic music, mixed works (for tape and instrument) or works related to specific topics are often the best place to find a bridge that will gently lead the listener into the new territory. For example, people who enjoy reading travel literature will find in Kristoff K.Roll’s Corazón Road the sublimated narrative of a journey through Central America. Those still young enough to enjoy fairy tales (I’m one of them) will find in Francis Dhomont’s Forêt profonde an in-depth reflection on this literary genre as inspired by the works of psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim, in the form of a captivating work with multiple narratives (in many languages) and electroacoustic music of a great evocative strength. Lighter and more fanciful, Libellune by Roxanne Turcotte finds its source in childlike imagination and is in part aimed at children without over-simplifying its artistic process. Guitar fans can turn to Parr(A)cousmatique, a wonderful project for which classical guitarist Arturo Parra co-wrote pieces with some of Quebec’s best electroacoustic composers: Stéphane Roy, Francis Dhomont (Quebecer at heart, at the very least), Robert Normandeau, and Gilles Gobeil. The latter has just released an album-long piece, Le contrat, written with and featuring avant-garde guitarist René Lussier. Lussier’s followers and people interested in Goethe’s play Faust (and its rich heritage) will find here an essential point of convergence, another bridge. Essential listens Those who want to explore further will probably want to venture into more abstract electroacoustic art. I recommend starting with the Quebec composers. Chauvinism? No way. It’s just that the music of composers like Dhomont, Normandeau, Gobeil, Yves Daoust, or Yves Beaupré seems to me to be more accessible than the music of British or French composers. It is more immediate, has a stronger impact (Gobeil, usually hitting hard), a more pleasant form of lyricism (Daoust, Beaupré), more welcoming architectures and themes (Dhomont, Normandeau). If you need places to start, try Normandeau’s Figures, Gobeil’s La mécanique des ruptures, Dhomont’s Cycle du son, and Beaupré’s Humeur de facteur. That being said, there are hours upon hours of beauty and fascination to be found in the works of Michel Chion (his powerful Requiem), Bernard Parmegiani (La création du monde), Jonty Harrsison (Articles indéfinis), Denis Smalley (Sources/Scènes), and Natasha Barrett (Isostasie), but they may seem more difficult or thankless on first listen. And for those interested in where these music come from, the EMF label offers L’œuvre musicale, the complete works of Pierre Schaeffer, the father of musique concrète and grandfather of electroacoustics. Tiny ideas A compilation album has the advantage of offering a large selection of artists and esthetics in a small, affordable format. Available at a budget price, eXcitations proposes a strong sampler of the productions on the label empreintes DIGITALes. The albums Electro clips and Miniatures concrètes, along with the brand new volume of the DISContact! series, cull short pieces (often under three minutes) to trigger interrogations and discoveries in those with a short attention span. And finally, for those of you who want to take their time and explore in short steps, the Cinéma pour l’oreille collection produced by the French label Métamkine contains many wonderful 3" CDs, 20 minutes in duration each, for a reduced price. The catalog includes titles by renown composers such as Michel Chion, Lionel Marchetti, Michèle Bokanowski, Bernhard Günter, and Éliane Radigue. These tiny albums are perfect for gift exchanges. Of course, all of the above are only recommendations. The best sound path to discovery is the one you follow by yourself, little by little. Best listens!
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Reviewby Alan Freeman in Audion #48 (UK), June 1, 2003 »
“… a vivid and engrossing concoction…”
Dhomont’s Cycle du son in four parts is a fascinating study in the art of painting with sound, with clusters and fragments of sonic sources usually manipulated way beyond their original context. In this way the techniques used in these works are quite rightly compared to the pioneering Études of Pierre Schaeffer, however the results are quite different, and very much late 20th Century. I would personally compare these digital manipulations to the similarly spacious, semi-musical constructions of Denis Smalley. The same air of invention, use of form and dynamics make a vivid and engrossing concoction that is simply “indescribable”.
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Kritiekin L’entrepôt (Belgium), September
1, 2002 »
“It is pure entertainment for the adventurous music-lover.”
… the sounds of Francis Dhomont very exciting. This already shows how varied electro acoustics can be. And this is what it is al about for Francis Dhomont. Cycle du son is a hymn od praise and an honouring to the genre and the main persons behind the genre. The most honour goes to ’inventor’ Pierre Schaeffer. But also other names as Pierre Henry, Stockhausen, Ferrari and Varèse gets are mentioned. No wonder that Cycle du son has become a very varied piece. A listen experience which brings you from one emotion into the other, and which will never become boring or dull. It is pure entertainment for the adventurous music-lover. Kritiek… ik deze release van Francis Dhomont. Dit geeft reeds aan wat een veelzijdig beestje de Electroacoustiek is. En daar draait het Francis Dhomont ook allemaal om. Het is een lofzang en een eerbetoon aan het genres en zijn grote voortrekkers. Vooral ’inventor’ Pierre Schaeffer maar ook voortrekkers als Pierre Henry, Stockhausen, Ferrari en Varèse, … krijgen een vermelding in deze homage. Cycle du son is dan ook een zeer onderhouden en vooral gevarieerde stuk geworden. Een luisterervaring die je van de ene ’emotie’ in de andere brengt, en die je maar zelden zal vervelen. Cycle du son is een spannend, zelfs entertainend stuk, dat elke avontuurlijke muziekliefhebber zal verblijden.
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Kritikby ASB in De:Bug
(Germany), July 23, 2002 »
“4/5”
Das kanadische Label empreintes DIGITALes beschäftigt sich mit Elektroakustik, Musique concrète und Audio Art. All diese Musiken verarbeiten neben den Klängen von Musikinstrumenten auch konkretes Tonmaterial wie Alltagsklänge und gefundene Geräusche. Der Kanadier Yves Beaupré ist nicht nur Cembalo-Bauer und -Spieler, sondern auch Klangsammler. So finden sich auf seinem Debüt neben Saiteninstrumentensounds auch im Rechner bearbeitete Klänge von Holz und Holzwerkzeugen. Francis Dhomont ist Pionier der elektroakustischen Musik und Schüler von Pierre Schaeffer. Die Herkunft der in „Cycle du son“ verwendeten Originalsounds ist im Gegensatz zu Beauprés Musik durch die elektronische Bearbeitung nicht mehr festzustellen. Bei allen Unterschieden im Umgang mit dem Klangmaterial ergeben sich zwei sehr dichte und spannende Hörstücke zwischen abstrakten Soundcollagen und instrumentalem Hörspiel. Oder einfach „Kino für die Ohren“, wie Francis Dhomont seine Musik nennt. 4/5
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Reviewby Jeremy Keens in Ampersand Etcetera #2002_8 (Australia), June 20, 2002
»
“A classic(al) musique concrète album, very listenable and endlessly satisfying.”
Born in 1926, Dhomont is the oldest artist on the impressive empreintes DIGITALes catalog (most were born in the 50s and 60s). His experience and ease with the language of musique concrète/electroacoustic writing is demonstrated clearly on this understated but compelling collection of pieces from 1998, incorporating works from 1989 and 1996. As one of the founders of the field, he originally worked with magnetic wire (the original tape) and since 1963 has produced only works for tape. This combination of experience and medium creates a more measured music without some of the fragmented flourishes that computers can bring to the form. This disk is something of an homage to Pierre Schaeffer, and incorporates sounds from his Étude aux objets, amongst other musicians and ‘celebrates sound and musique concrète.’ My musical education is lacking, and I can’t recognise all the references, but it is a pleasure none the less. In Objets retrouvés we have a warm, analogue introduction that slowly flows as mysterious noises emerge in volleys, hovering on the edge of recognition. AvatArsSon is in six parts, and dedicated to ‘the inventors of the treasure’ (some of whom are named) and traverses ‘some of the stages of the sound odyssey.’ Each part is distinct in structure and method: Paysages opens with a naturalistic sampled village then shifts into manipulation, Voix is not surprisingly a complex voiced based piece while Avatars is buzzy dits and electronica and À suivre… takes long tones and buzzing. A fascinating journey which those more knowledgeable can mine. There seem to be two modes in Novars - one is lyrical ringing tones with washes and a pulsating cloud, while the other is more percussive, swirling, more effected. The two forms alternate, flirting with recognisability and dancing away in this light duet. Finally Phonurgie is more dense with hollow sounds, whistles, bleeps, fluttering wings and a darker feel created from similar sounds to those which have come before. Distorted strings, voices a light swirl and fade. A classic(al) musique concrète album, very listenable and endlessly satisfying.
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Critiquesby Catherine Perrey in Ici
Montréal (Québec), June 13, 2002 »
“Voyage vertigineux, plongée sonore, pour mieux nous immerger ou coeur du son.”
Francis Dhomont est un électroccousticien de renom. On retrouve sur ce disque plusieurs pièces produites entre 1989 et 1998 et qui ont été publiées pour le cinquantenaire de la musique concrète. Ceux qui connaissent quelque peu l’univers de Dhomont auront un bel aperçu de son travail sur les dix dernières années. Des pièces sont devenues célèbres dans le milieu électroacoustique, on pense notamment à Objets retrouvés, AvatArsSon, ou Novars. Il est ainsi aisé de faire des ponts entre les sons, les structures, les textures et de comprendre les liens qui unissent ces différents axes, mais surtout d’effleurer la méthode Dhomont. Voyage vertigineux, plongée sonore, pour mieux nous immerger ou coeur du son.
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Reviewby Graeme Rowland in Brainwashed (USA), June 2, 2002
»
What can you say about 76-year old composer Francis Dhomont? You could say he’s been given lots of prizes for his noises. You could say he talks a good acousmatic game theory. You could say he wears an eyepatch over his right eye. He first grabbed my attention with his Frankenstein Symphony on Asphodel, a plunderphonic acousmatic journey on which he skillfully cut up and stitched together various excerpts from works by his French Canadian contemporaries. He now tips his hat to perhaps his biggest inspiration. This sound cycle is a fiftieth anniversary homage to musique concrète pioneer Pierre Schaeffer, specifically the first movement of his Étude aux objets, from which Dhomont has sourced his raw materials. There are many furtive similarities to the Schaeffer original, but Dhomont stretches the journey out almost twice as long and eschews Schaeffer’s violent tape splice edits, focusing and magnifying curiously questioning speaker panning whirls into successive new smoothed out seascapes. In the opening funeral march, Objets retrouvés, the sounds seem to be asking themselves what they are, curious to find themselves hanging around their own echoes. Dhomont breathes new life into them and gives them celebratory purpose. The second cycle AvatArsSon paints in the sky from a more varied and clattering palette. Sounds loom into the foreground, shimmer and mutate. Latterly choral vox limbo over glugging mystery spools. Bells ring out across the city full of gleeful honking taxis, soon washed away by tidal waves. This is the most cinematic of the four cycles, in that more untransmuted sound sources are apparent than in relatively abstracted sequences elsewhere. The third cycle Novars was the first to be completed and is the hub around which the others rotate, but since it is sequenced after Objets retrouvés despite being completed seven years earlier, it seems like an extended version thereof. Phonurgie hones and magnifies elements from the previous cycles casting long late summer evening shadows and deep pool reflections, folding mystery into myth. Latterly it seems as if several glass instrument orchestras are playing cut up fragments in reverse as they sink into the sea. A little recurring chuckle is a mirthful reminder of how much fun listening can be.
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Kritiekby SVS in Audiotest #11 (Belgium), June 1, 2002 »
Het Franse label empreintes DIGITALes biedt onderdak aan een resem al dan niet obscure avantgardekunstenaars waarvan Robert Normandeau en Hildegard Westerkamp de bekendste zijn. Met Cycle du son betoont Francis Dhomont eer aan de legendarische geluidskunstenaar Pierre Schaeffer. Het vierdelige stuk maakt zowel gebruik van samples uit Schaeffers legendarische compositie Études Aux Objets, als geluiden uit Dhomonts eigen klankencollectie. De akoestische clash van die twee werelden is een onheilspellend, maar altijd boeiend geluidsdecor vol glashelder resonerende klankspelen. Humeur de facteur van Yves Beaupré is een klankencollage opgebouwd uit timmerhokgeluiden: geluid afkomstig van en gemaakt door allerlei voorwerpen, gereedschap, hout en dies meer. Die bronnen worden vervolgens via elektronica van hun identiteit gestript en tot functioneel element van de compositie gebombardeerd. Het resultaat blijft over de hele lijn intrigerend en stuwt je door een vaak hallucinante dimensie van overheerlijke klankschepsels. De Nieuw-Zeelander John Young dwingt de luisteraar zijn van wonderlijke details voorziene La limite du bruit met een hoofdtelefoon te beluisteren. Zo fladderen de ratelende, druppelende en schurende klankjes van Pythagoras’s Curtain je trommelvlies in. Even fascinerend is ’Inner’ dat aanvangt met het geluid van iemand die zijn adem inhoudt. Klassieke avantgarde/musique concrète die boeit van a tot z.
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Reviewby Frans de Waard in Vital
(Netherlands), May 23, 2002 » Canadian composer Francis Dhomont, whose previous work has been released by the same label, thought it to be about time to pay hommage to 50 years of musique concrète. That is around 1998, because three out of four works were composed then and it has been then 50 years ago that Pierre Schaeffer composed his first work using daily sound material (a.o. derived from sounds from trains in his Cinq études de bruits (Five Etudes of Noise)). Dhomont harks back to the same sound materials for all four pieces as Schaeffer used. Of course through the use of the new techniques it all sounds very different. Whereas the original “Five Etudes” last 15 minutes or so, this CD takes up 50 or so minutes. In Novars Dhomont samples the sounds of Schaeffer and plays around with them, either by time stretching, filtering, looping etc. And this is what’s going on in the three other pieces as well. Dhomont has a very classical approach to the material, his approach is not very different or new then from most of the other composers on empreintes DIGITALes. Much reverb, oscillators and filters transform the sound in tumbling parts that fall over each other. Not a bad thing, but in every sense, classical.
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Where’s the CD Review?by Matthew McFarlane in Where’s the Beat? (Canada), May 6,
2002 »
“Dhomont always draws us to his unique sonic environment.”
Francis Dhomont has become legendary both in his native France and his adopted Canada. As one of the founders of what many call the “Montréal School” of acousmatics, Dhomont’s musical style is all his own. How exciting therefore that empreintes DIGITALes has released another disc of his music. This disc is comprised of four linked works: Objets retrouvés, AvatArsSon, Novars and Phonurgie. Each piece pays homage to the history of musique concrète and electroacoustics. Novars strikes me as the strongest of the three. Dhomont has clearly constructed this piece with a lot of thought about musical structure. Quotations of Schaeffer and Machaut never sound forced or inconsistent with the other material. Moreover, it is Dhomont’s placement of sound, the use of repeated gestural fragments and his fabulous feeling of sonic space that makes not only Novars but in general the whole disc wonderful. Without a doubt more difficult than his previous discs like Forêt profonde Dhomont always draws us to his unique sonic environment.
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Soundcheck Reviewby Philip Clark in The
Wire #220 (UK), May 1, 2002 »
“Dhomont’s piece is superbly crafted…”
Canadian electroacoustic composer Francis Dhomont offers a 50 minute cycle of pieces paying tribute to musique concrète pioneer Pierre Schaeffer. Describing the opening piece as a “funeral march”, Dhomont shapes a paraphrase out of material from the latter’s Étude aux objects. AvatArsSon draws a trajectory between Schaeffer and those composers he has influenced, including Xenakis, Stockhausen, Berio and Luc Ferrari. The third piece suggests a connection between Schaeffer and the 14th century French composer Guillaume de Machaut. This being a cycle, the final section, Phonurgie, draws all the various strands together. Dhomont’s piece is superbly crafted and does everything an electroacoustic composition should, but is that really enough?
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Reviewby François Couture in All-Music
Guide (USA), May 1, 2002 »
“His touch, so easily recognizable (in the movements, the colors, the narrative), remains
strong.”
Francis Dhomont’s first album since the critically acclaimed Forêt profonde in 1996, Cycle du son was released in late 2001 and consists of a cycle of four works premiered in 1998. At the time the composer was 72 years old. Taking a cue from the celebrations surrounding the 50th anniversary of the “advent” of musique concrète, he created a rich work that takes a look at the distance electroacoustic music has crossed during that time. But Cycle du son is not a historical overview. Instead it integrates concepts, forms and pet sounds from the main figures of the genre, all done with much subtlety. The roots of the work are found in part three, Novars. Created in 1989, it used sound sources from Guillaume de Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame and Pierre Schaeffer’s Étude aux objets. The cycle stemmed from this piece and all movements are interlocked with quotes and the use of similar sound sources and references. Objets retrouvés is a short re-reading of Schaeffer’s Étude aux objets, the first musique concrète “classic.” Its elegance tells much about Dhomont’s respect for the man. AvatArsSon is the strongest work here and ranks among the man’s best. Revisiting other composers, Dhomont actually offers a synthesis of his own music, from the formalism of his Cycle de l’errance to the dreamy confusion of Forêt profonde (it even includes speaking voices, a trademark of his own work). Phonurgie concludes the set with a look forward, avoiding nostalgic sentimentality. This album may not be as strong as some of his previous efforts, but it will still please fans of Dhomont and aficionados of electroacoustic music. His touch, so easily recognizable (in the movements, the colors, the narrative), remains strong.
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Reviewby Ingvar Loco Nordin in Sonoloco Record Reviews (Sweden),
April 1, 2002 »
“… the shine of his art is this mixture of seriousness and humor, in an almost burlesque,
Rabelaisian style. This goes straight to the heart of the listener…”
Francis Dhomont is — oblivious of his noble age (born 1926) — always and forever the young at heart (characteristics that he shares with Stockhausen and Bayle and Dylan!) Check, for example, his lively participation on the CECdiscuss mailinglist. He is as active as ever in his sound art too, which this new release on empreintes DIGITALes is ample proof of. I was looking forward to meeting this good old Maestro in St. Petersburg this coming summer of 2002, when the first “Russian International Festival of Electronic, Electroacoustic, Experimental and Avantgarde Music — Electroshock” is taking place in St. Petersburg under the direction of the proprietor of Electroshock Records; Mr. Artemiy Artemiev of Moscow. Dhomont is one of the many composers and musicians attending this exciting festival, but… Artemiy Artemiev has decided to host the event simultaneously with the Stockhausen Courses in Kùrten outside Cologne, and since I have been asked to attend there (when Stockhausen calls, you do come!), I will miss out on the encounter with Francis Dhomont, who nonetheless is one of my true heroes of electroacoustic art. Hopefully, Mr. Artemiev will check his schedule better next year, if the St. Petersburg Festival will reappear as an annual event. Once upon a time the cultural axis of Europe was an arch from Paris across Berlin to St. Petersburg, and perhaps the time to revive this cultural flow has come now. Let’s hope so, for it was a vibrant, fruitful cultural axis before the Russian Revolution. The gentleman Francis Dhomont arrives on this CD with a humorous twinkle in his eye, and part of the shine of his art is this mixture of seriousness and humor, in an almost burlesque, Rabelaisian style. This goes straight to the heart of the listener, and the inside of Existence is repainted with the acoustician’s sonic sable brush, lots of stars twinkling and a small table with a lamp and one chair placed out in the black void of space, centering attention to words being scribbled by good intentions and seasoned with the salt of this earth… How good it is that one of these gentlemen with a French beret and a wine glass in his hand, gauloise between his lips, has risen from the café table and walked right into our sound reproduction devices with the art of his poetic mind! Welcome, Monsieur Dhomont! Francis Dhomont’s artistic traces go back to people like Ginette Waldmeier, Charles Koechlin and Nadia Boulanger. At about the same time as Pierre Schaeffer, in Paris in the late 1940s, Dhomont independently discovered what could be done sound-wise with magnetic wire; musique concrète being born. In the long run Dhomont gave up traditional instrumental composition to dedicate himself completely to tape work; electroacoustic composition. He lives in a flux between Canada and France; another cultural axis of today, especially in the art of acousmatic electroacoustics, which in France and Canada is especially prolific and poetic. Dhomont also writes theoretical texts and essays, and his antecedents show an editorship of L’espace du son published by Musiques & Recherches in Belgium and Électroacoustique-Québec: L’essor published by the Canadian magazine Circuit. Dhomont has also in his career produced many acousmatic radio programs for Ina-GRM of Radio France, and he has co-produced a Canadian radio series entitled Voyage au bout de l’inouï (“Journey to the Unheard-of”) Dhomont — in the CD booklet (which of course in the case of empreintes DIGITALes is a fold-out hard-paper contraption, which is utterly original and extremely innovative as well as… pleasant! — and packed with information) — goes on to describe the first of the four parts of Cycle du son; Objets retrouvés (“in memoriam Pierre Schaeffer”): “Both a lamento and a funeral march, this paraphrase of Pierre Schaeffer’s Étude aux objets is not without connection to ornate, figures choral style. Three voices (in the contrapuntal sense of the term), developed from elements drawn from the first movement of the Étude [Objets exposés], embroider and animate the long values of the original subjects that make up the “choral”, which constitutes the fourth voice of the polyphonic composition. The choice of a classical form, so important in Bach, was a conscious one that was designed to honor the memory of Schaeffer. […] And so here we have one giant of this art form celebrating another one! I listened to the original Étude aux objets by Pierre Schaeffer from the Ina-GRM issue before shifting into Objets retrouvés, concentrating on Objets exposés, and it is of course really a mimicry to begin with, but then I loose myself in the beauty of it all, only waking up to clear reminiscences here and there, where Schaeffer and Dhomont act like soul-mates, though on different planets or in different dimensions — or maybe just separated by a thin, semi-transparent layer of time-lapse, through which only telepathy can penetrate, abiding to the law of non-local connections (Fritjof Capra: The Tao of Physics), which says that occurrences on the atomic level millions of light-years away affect events here, just as clear and distinct as if you yourself slammed your fist into the table to drive home a point in an argument — simply showing that things may not always — or ever! — be as they appear, because appearance is just a convenient way to work perception, which is our way of co-existing with the environment, for practical reasons, but maybe not for any other reasons… Anyway, Dhomont’s Schaeffer-music is lightheartedly explorative, bouncing through a jumble of suddenly appearing sonic spheres and cubes, like in a Nintendo arcade game, or in an adventure of virtual reality. The sounds are classical electronic bodies, appearing, receding, reappearing, changing shapes and density, conveying a solid sonic joy of investigation, and the double vision of Schaeffer-Dhomont dances around the stage like Stockhausen’s Lucipolyp in Luzifers Zorn (“Lucifer’s Fury”) from Montag aus Licht (“Monday from Light”). This piece is similar to the sight of a child ripping the clothes from a scare-crow out in the farm field, dressing up in the old rags and staggering towards the horizon; playful, spiritual in a special way, very magical… ceremonial even… the child of all ages… Track 2 is AvatArsSon; a longer work of 18 minutes. Francis Dhomont has given it a lengthy subtitle: “in six connected parts: Fondation; Avatars; Voix; Aventures; Paysages; À suivre… to the inventors of the treasure… Bayle, Berio, Chion, Dufour, Ferrari, Henry, Malec, Parmegiani, Reibel, Risset, Schaeffer, Stockhausen, Teruggi, Varèse, Xenakis, Zanési… and others too numerous to name…” Surely my heart, which largely resides in the body of electroacoustics, beats a little extra at the enumeration of all these great composers, who each and every one has meant so much… The jolting, bouncing tendencies keep up, but joined by thermal shocks and timbral layers, as Henryean doors of French sheds creak (Variations pour une porte et un soupir) and areas are opened and closed, whooshing and wheezing atmospheres closing in and opening up; small rooms expanding, the walls shooting out in four directions to the horizon and below, the ceiling lifting into the stratosphere… and suddenly you’re in a summer meadow where a child sits in the grass, as fragments of thoughts flutter around you like a cloud of butterflies; a cloud that explodes, powder of wings setting like a mist around you… and vibrating planes and percussive electronic rhythms merge with watery ascents and descents, your fingers plucking at the spokes of a racing bike wheel at a section of Tour de France that runs straight through your cerebral cortex, where electrical charges transmit messages through the neurons like meteorites across a winter’s sky… Thin layers of ice move in above and below each other at different speeds in this music, causing auditory hallucinatory effects, kaleidoscopically tightening and opening, in a breathe of the sound waves. Reverse glass paints with thin lines on transparent surfaces, as the sun rises and blinds you with one single ray of light out of the Tibetan high plateau, suddenly hitting hard on your retina, like the light of enlightenment in your post-life Bardo, towards an imminent rebirth… and there’s something reassuringly magical in AvatArsSon as the boy’s voice of Gesang der Jünglinge opens up Stockhausen’s innocent face and curious eyes, penetrating your honesty down to the last drop of coffee-powered creativity… A maze of barbed wire — or vibrating stainless pots in a restaurant kitchen — introduce voices, and then the sudden “Dies irae” of Michel Chion’s Requiem… and so many other quotes intertwined in this barbed wire existence of magnificence across the misty expanses of World War I battlegrounds… Rolling rocks move like La Mémoire des Pierres by Gabriel Poulard, rocks and pebbles sliding, rolling, bouncing down a decline below an Icelandic glacier in one of Björk’s most gravel-haunting pieces (Aurora from Vespertine; a masterpiece if you’ve ever hiked hard to get to the edge of a glacier in Lapland or in Iceland!), until a minute section from Denis Dufour’s Bocalises — the ultimate glass music! — twists and bulges the sonic field in crystalline refractions of audio… when a terrific havoc breaks out, throwing cardboard boxes filled with styrofoam around the room, like a Picus viridis causing panic in an ant-mound… Sirens in the distance and close-up wineglass-rim pings leave room for remnants of coarse sounds falling around you like demolition debris, and tender, tapping bounces of brittle rolling spheres sharpens your attention even more… when church bells toll and crowds in narrow lanes and hooting cars pass by in a carnival or demonstration flurry… only to submerge you into the local shipwreck in the harbor inlet, and all local fish swarm your sight… AvatArsSon is a masterly and lustful reflection on the evolution of acousmatics! Track 3 is Novars, of which it has already been said that it is the first of the pieced herein to be composed (1989), and that it has been released before. Dhomont has given this also a subtitle: “to music concrète and Pierre Schaeffer, its unfortunate inventor” — and I believe it was Schaeffer who called himself that; “the unfortunate inventor of musique concrète”, and it is a well-known fact that Schaeffer in his older age stood back from his earlier achievements… Soft and polished, gently swirling tonalities open this long (19 minutes) work, clearly mirroring some of Schaeffer’s Étude aux objets, but this time around bringing Schaeffer’s aspects way up to the present moment, in high class, reflecting, introverted strands of audio; Dhomont gently and swiftly applying precise timbral nuances with his electronic brush, as the light of day falls in through the many colors of the tinted church windows of his music, projecting rectangles and rhomboids of colored light across the stone floor of the spiritual expanse of the church association… where cats would lick their paws, were they only let in… The sacral illusions keep up, as the music gets a bit rough, retreating into a side-crypt filled with brown, unshapely sounds of unsettled arguments and bitter feelings, the furniture moving in kinetic automation in this ill-spirited force-field, almost like in Ákos Rózmann’s Crypt With Table and Chairs or La Monte Young’s Poem for Chairs, Tables, Benches etc. There is furniture at un-rest in this section of the music. An exorcism of sorts is called for… if we’re going to sweat this out, tepee style, medicine man style… and sure enough, a relative calm returns, with minor glitching frictions appearing between time-layers, between now and right before and a long time ago… but the landscape opens up in fresh-air views of canyons and mountains, as vibrations of stylized woodpeckers salute the forested north, be it in Canada, Scandinavia or Russia; many creatures live there which we will never see, and the smell of resin greets us in fresh fragrances out of the awesome expanses of coniferous forests in Dhomont’s sound-painting. A wild, almost medieval dance — a gigue of brutal, harsh upheavals — follows, in which love and death grab at each other in an almost even show of force, while shooting grains of sharp, metallic audio move outwards in gravitational trajectories — and it gets calmer again… after the catharsis… Indian sandalwood incense rises towards the ceiling of my Scandinavian room, and in the music torch lights flicker in a cave in France, where prehistoric paintings are about to be discovered… and life is richer than can ever be understood by the living… The concluding last track of the four is Phonurgie, which Dhomont has equipped with a dedication: “to Inés Wickmann and her found objects”. Inés Wickmann is a Colombian sculptor and artist who lives in Montréal, Canada, married to Francis Dhomont. An interesting project that Wickmann has participated in is the Breathe Project, which also has a bearing on the reviewer’s native Sweden. The initial gesture is the same, but then an eerie ring rinses your mind like Harpo Marx’s handkerchief, as thudding, drilling sounds even mimic all too familiar mobile phone irritations… but maybe this is simply reminiscences of short-wave communications… Many grainy properties appear here, like were you emptying sacks of green peas on the industrial conveyor belts of earlier and almost forgotten decades… Jet engine magnitudes fill the space completely, big fuselages taxiing out on concrete runways until flapping birds’ wings envision feathered bodies dispersing in all directions… Hectic jumbles of entrapped sounds move about madly inside the sonic magicians electronic bottle, reaching speeds that in real life would heat up the confined space to melting of the glass, which would flow out in gluey shapes, like Salvador Dali’s melting watches… Dhomont’s sound art has many properties in common with Gaudi’s architecture in Catalonian Barcelona; the prohibition of bourgeois, degenerative 90 angles, the unexpected and uneven distribution of weight and mass, nonetheless balancing out in mysterious calculations of mechanics of materials, like in Sagrada Familia’s exclamation of a joyous, triumphant “Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus!”
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Critiqueby François Tousignant in Le
Devoir (Québec), March 2, 2002 »
“Encore une fois, Dhomont réussit le miracle d’éviter le piège de
la facilité, nous faisant saisir l’insaisissable…”
La démarche de Francis Dhomont se révèle toujours d’une singularité exceptionnelle. Parfois, au gré d’un concert ou d’une radiodiffusion, on entend une pièce, plus ou moins courte. Le propos en est anecdotique, plus abstrait, souvent interrogateur. C’est toujours bien fait, tellement que parfois on reste sur sa faim. C’est que, fin alchimiste, Dhomont ne révèle ses formules que par bribes à son auditoire. Sa vraie force — il l’a assez souvent prouvé par le passé — se situe au rang de la fresque. Ce Cycle du son le démontre, encore une fois, avec une incroyable maestria. Je passe par-dessus l’analyse descriptive de chacun des mouvements; le compositeur en offre une sur la pochette, généreuse autant que pertinente et brève. Concentrons plutôt notre regard acoustique sur ce dernier chef d’œuvre en date. Il y a chez Dhomont une sorte de trinité présidant à l’œuvre que la technique transcendée du médium acousmatique met encore plus en évidence dans cette musique de grande maturité. D’abord, il faut parler de la structure de sa musique. Même un néophyte rébarbatif à cette forme d’art peut comprendre ce qui se passe dans l’instant, et en saisir le sens. Du ludique au presque agressif (mais pas trop), de l’inquisitif au réconfortant, de l’identifiable à l’inouï, les moments s’enchainent et s’articulent. On n’en comprend pas toujours le sens ou la nécessité. Alors, la mémoire se met en branle, cette mémoire que Dhomont, à l’instar de Proust, semble tant solliciter pour mieux saisir et inventer le monde. Nous entrons dans le monde du formel, de la construction. Chacun des instants entendus se met à prendre un relief et en imprime un nouveau sur ce qui s’en vient, ce qui est, ou ce qui encore parfois se répéte. On entend une démonstration du fonctionnement de la perception sonore qui semble ne viser qu’un but: la communication d’une idée. Donc, à la troisième étape, celle qui différencie le véritable artiste du manipulateur de boutons: le domaine indescriptible en mots de l’intuition concrétisée en œuvre musicale. Est-ce satisfaisant? Certes, mais là n’est pas le propos; c’est enrichissant. D’autant plus que ce Cycle du son ne se gêne pas pour citer des classiques du genre (en fait, il s’agit d’une sorte d’hommage posthume à Pierre Schaeffer combiné à une célébration du jubilé du genre d’art qu’il a inventé). Si vous ne les reconnaissez pas, ce n’est pas très grave car les aspérités stylistiques vont vite renseigner l’auditeur attentif sur la direction que prend la musique selon la nature (ou la constitution) du son et le traitement qu’on y applique. On a donc affaire au résultat des réflexions d’un aussi grand théoricien que technicien — chose rare en ce monde électroacoustique, qu’il transpose tout naturellement dans l’univers des sons, un peu à la manière des visions abstraites beethovéniennes, de certains contrapuntistes de la Renaissance ou des avancées de Webern. L’exploit se hisse tellement haut que l’Idée domine radicalement et poétiquement la quincaillerie mise en branle pour donner naissance à la musique. Pendant près d’une heure, Dhomont force l’attention. Voici donc l’avantage du disque. Car si on perd sur ses deux haut-parleurs la variété de l’orchestre de diffusion utilisé en salle, vous avez tout loisir, dans cette magnifique réalisation sur deux pistes, de prendre votre meilleur fauteuil et de vous y installer au moment où vous vous sentez le plus disponible à faire le petit effort exigé pour gravir cette montagne magistrale. Au Cycle du son de Dhomont, on doit répondre par le «cycle de notre écoute». Là, la profondeur d’un univers se déploie galactiquement, rejoignant presque les conceptions astrophysiciennes du monde. Encore une fois, Dhomont réussit le miracle d’éviter le piège de la facilité, nous faisant saisir l’insaisissable qu’il recherche et auquel il touche, nous emmenant avec lui dans ses aspirations.
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Reviewby Randall Smith in The
WholeNote #7:5 (Canada), February 1, 2002 »
“If I were asked to recommend a single CD to introduce one’s ear to the world of
musique concrète, I would say Cycle du son.”
Recollecting a sonic spirit that has evolved over 50 years of imagining, visioning and sensing, Francis Dhomont’s new CD Cycle du son takes us back to the roots of an unusual art form and returns us to the here and now, intact and enlightened. We are summoned by the jolt, forced to hear the distinctive characteristics of musique concrète of old before being led confidently into the present. After all, the first composition Objets retrouvés is a memorial to one of the inventors of the medium, Pierre Schaeffer. Collectively the four compositions included here provide a sonic history of acousmatic art. The classic sounds are intertwined and juxtaposed with new inventions providing a palette of rich colours and dynamic tones. Francis Dhomont, who divides his time between his native France and Canada, delicately weaves a kaleidoscope of sound objects, evolving fluidly and freely through a maze of juxtapositions and contrasts. From the waves of an ocean to the ripple created by a single drop of water he dramatically takes the listener through an experience that is both terrifying and serene. Dhomont’s skillful resources do not end with capturing the sound abjects themselves, however; even with such complex and dynamic sound material his attention to pitch relation and form leaves one firmly convinced of his mastery. If I were asked to recommend a single CD to introduce one’s ear to the world of musique concrète, I would say Cycle du son. What Pierre Schaeffer revolutionized in France, Francis Dhomont continues to explore to new heights and this is a CD about which I can say without reserve, everything works. other texts in
electrocd.com Francis Dhomont: Cycle du son (CD): reviews |
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