| << |
electroradio
to add to your cart, click the price (price always includes handling + shipping)
top
Points de passagesby Mario Gauthier in electrocd.com (Québec), September 15, 2007 |6329|
“Cette musique possède du corps, de la prestance, de la force en même temps
qu’une fragile délicatesse, une subtilité, une limpidité presque diaphane.”
Lorsque l’on cherche la définition d’un «Big Bang», on se trouve confronté à une curieuse ambiguïté. Le terme réfère à une gigantesque déflagration extérieure qui serait issue d’un point microscopique de l’univers. Tout ce qui constitue le monde tel qu’on le connaît — y compris nous — serait donc issu d’une simple parcelle projetée qui se serait dilatée hyper-rapidement dans le temps et l’espace. En bref, le terme implique une «micro» et une «macro» dimensionnalité, elles-mêmes constituées d’innombrables points de fuite, lesquels en contiendraient d’autres et ce, à l’infini. Il y a quelque chose de cet ordre dans les petits Big Bangs de Marcelle Deschênes. La majorité des critiques s’attarderont à commenter en long et en large les qualités de la musique. Et comme cela advient fréquemment, on parlera peu (sinon pas du tout) de ce qui la rend spécifique d’un point de vue plus strictement sonore. Et moins encore: de ce que l’on peut ou doit faire pour y parvenir. Cette zone obscure, cette quatrième dimension presque, c’est celle qui se rattache au «mastering», i.e. à l’optimisation maximale de la sonorité d’une œuvre par le biais d’outils [du studio, aujourd’hui numérique]. Et paradoxalement, selon la connaissance qu’on en possède, elle peut pourtant modifier considérablement la nature et les caractéristiques de la musique en ceci que, sans en altérer la sonorité et les caractéristiques initiales, elle en propose littéralement une relecture qui peut magnifier ou aplanir ses qualités initiales. Dans le cas de petits Big Bangs, c’est de magnification qu’il s’agit. Au double sens du terme. Ce qui m’a le plus impressionné dans ce travail, c’est que petits Big Bangs est, d’une certaine façon, une sorte de miracle. Connaissant l’état des bandes maîtresses et la datation des musiques (les œuvres proposées sont de 1976, 1987 (rév 1995), 1992, 2000 et 2000 (rév 2002), j’étais à la fois emballé à l’idée de savoir qu’enfin ces œuvres seraient accessibles sur disque, mais très perplexe quant à la possibilité d’unir en un tout un corpus si disparate en termes de sonorités et d’esthétiques. Comme de raison, chacune des pièces portait les empreintes de marque de leur âge et celles des technologies qui en avaient permis la réalisation. De plus, j’avais de sérieuses réserves quant au bien-fondé de graver le tout sur disque DVD. Car si le potentiel de qualité sonore du support est indéniable (24 bits, 96 ou 48Khz pour le DVD-Audio versus 16 bits, 44,1Khz pour le CD conventionnel), le contexte d’écoute et les périphériques m’apparaissent, encore aujourd’hui, sujets à suspicions. Il y avait là chausse-trape et miroir aux alouettes. La technologie pouvait être ici être soit rédemptrice, soit fatale. Dans ce cas-ci, il y eut rédemption. Cette musique possède du corps, de la prestance, de la force en même temps qu’une fragile délicatesse, une subtilité, une limpidité presque diaphane. Et l’optimisation rend admirablement compte de tout cela. J’ai effectué trois écoutes attentives de petits Big Bangs. La première fut faite au casque d’écoute Stax SR 5 (casque d’écoute électrostatique — le mien date des années 80 — doté d’un préamplificateur; le rendu sonore en est extrêmement précis). Celui-ci était branché sur un amplificateur McInthosh MA 6200 à transistors auquel était directement relié un lecteur DVD de marque Koss — i.e. celui de monsieur tout-le-monde. Pour la seconde, J’ai utilisé le même système, exception faite qu’en lieu et place des Stax, le tout était diffusé via mes vieilles enceintes acoustiques Celestion 66, nec plus ultra à une époque, mais qui sont maintenant un peu molles et imprécises. La troisième audition fut faite à l’aide d’un système de moyenne gamme: amplificateur Technic, DVD Magnasonic, enceintes acoustiques Energy. Il n’y avait donc aucune composante haute-fidélité dans l’ensemble de ces systèmes, mais plutôt une série de périphériques de bonne ou de moyenne qualité qui pouvaient connoter le tout en bien ou en mal. J’anticipais avec beaucoup de pessimisme le résultat, mais à l’écoute, je constatai avec grand plaisir que tout avait acquis une clarté, une finesse et une justesse timbrale étonnante. Il n’y avait ni gonflement superflu, ni carence, ni écart dynamique ou sonore. Tout y était remarquablement équilibré: niveau général dans et entre les pièces (ce qui est un tour de force, compte tenu des différences considérables de fiabilité des bandes maîtresses d’origines: PCM/Beta Hi-Fi, DAT, CD, etc.), respect de la qualité et des particularités originelles des timbres, précisions des registres, des intensités, des profondeurs de champs, etc. Bref, le report sur un support «ingrat» était totalement réussi! Connaissant un peu ce type de travail et l’extrême difficulté qu’il implique parfois, je sais qu’obtenir une telle unité et un tel aboutissement dû être excessivement complexe. Compromis, sacrifices, remodelages, camouflages, truquages, retouches micro et macroscopiques durent être innombrables… Mais, de tout ce travail obstiné, silencieux et souterrain, de tous ces questionnements — voire, de ces réinterprétations — rien ne transparaît, hormis le très haut niveau musical, l’originalité et les qualités musicales et sonores indéniables des œuvres de Marcelle Deschênes. Et c’est à cela que, selon moi, on reconnaît un mastering réussi: par le fait qu’il est une «plus-value» dont on ne remarque jamais la présence, mais dont l’absence est souvent cruelle… petits Big Bangs est un projet de très haute tenue. En ces temps où de multiples utopies techno-romantiques donnent à croire aux créateurs qu’ils peuvent être des «dieux» (dixit le titre du dernier livre d’Hervé Fisher (Nous serons des dieux, Éditions VLB, Montréal, 2006), ce type de travail ré-actualise deux débats fondamentaux en musique acoustique et électroacoustique: l’impact des outils sur les intentions créatrices des artistes et celui du rôle de l’ «artisan» versus celui du créateur. Certes, la frontière entre ces mondes est très mince. Et peut-être est-ce pour cela que l’on parle si peu et si mal du mastering qui, finalement, combine art et artisanat. Celui-ci, comme la composition, loge en effet aux deux enseignes d’un trièdre fertile. D’un côté se trouve l’intervention d’une connaissance particulière, d’une «technique» très délicate et difficile à maîtriser en ceci qu’elle se veut à la fois transparente mais agissante. Au centre se retrouvent les outils utilisés qui connotent et colorent intrinsèquement les œuvres. Et à l’autre extrémité se retrouvent des enjeux multiples: les rôles et limites inhérentes à l’ensemble ces pratiques; le fait qu’une œuvre finie ne l’est pas forcément; que le mastering peut ajouter ou retrancher à cela (pour en savoir davantage, on consultera avec profit la revue en ligne eContact, numéro 9.3: Mastering en électroacoustique: un état des lieux / Mastering in electroacoustics: State of affairs — cec.concordia.ca/econtact/9_3/); la nécessité d’avoir un «auditeur critique»; le fait que l’on ne peut pas faire tous les métiers ni maîtriser tous les outils, etc. Mais, je cause, je cause et j’en oublie le pourquoi de cette missive: petits Big Bangs. En bref: c’est une réussite exceptionnelle… Comment disait-on déjà, à une époque? Ah oui! «Chapeaux bas, Messieurs: des génies!» Car il y a incontestablement une forme de génie dans ce que Marcelle Deschênes et Dominique Bassal ont su et ont pu faire de cet ensemble. [23-iv-2007]
top
Reviewby Jos Smolders in Earlabs (The Netherlands), July 29, 2007 |6333|
“It’s brilliant and the world could have known as early as 1976 that with
Deschenes a very fine composer.”
Not only does empreintes DIGITALes release the music of its core composers like Dhomont, Normandeau, Calon — all acknowledged first class acousmaticians — but it also has room for lesser known talents. Marcelle Deschênes is one of the latter group with a very crafty repertoire. This disk presents work spanning the years 1976 to 2000. Six major works, two of which are thematically connected. Her sonic language is rich (as is the case with most of the ED composers), explosive, harmonic, and at times sensual. Although the music for the most part fits the acousmatic bill, with sounds in turmoil, audiotechnological machismo and abstract structure there are definitely bends and corners inside the compositions that reveal the touch of a woman. Deschênes studied with Schaeffer himself and Guy Reibel during the late 60s. After that she returned to her home state Quebec and worked as a lecturer and was involved in many organisations there. She has connected her work to many multimedia and theatre productions and some of these are presented on this disk. The disc starts off with Big Bang II. This is a work that was started in 1987 and has been reworked in 1995. It is a surprisingly versatile composition. It offers very nice and subtle granulated sounds, but also a female choir, short snippets of Tuvalian throat singing and typically sampled sounds. The structure of the piece is very well paced. Indigo, second on this disc is the first part of a diptych called Griffes (Claws). Deschênes started this work in 2000 and considers this piece still unfinished. Indigo proceeds at a slow pace. Low drones superimposed by higher pitched covers set the atmosphere until at around 4 minutes a suddenly climax lets the work take a corner and new material is entered. Voices, together with electronic sounds, build up tension several times, each time going from rest into more restlessness. Until the Le bruit des ailes (The Sound of Wings) starts with the same low drones acompanied by the sound of wings flapping. Quite a happy scenery. This continues until a huge disruption changes things dramatically. (I was really surprised to hear harsh distorted sounds (lots of loud block waves here), which is quite unusual within the ED context.) The sound of wings takes on different forms which are not at all very nice and sweet. The theme for this piece is from Hans Christian Andersen’s tale The Ugly Duckling, where the wings are stretched and mutilated and mixed with the sounds of ice storms, erupting volcanoes and the sounds of nuclear bombs exploding. Lux, the fourth composition here, starts with a voice reciting the word ‘desire’ again and again. Deformed, crying out in a whispering voice, the atmosphere is immediately threatening. This piece is the audio part of a multimedia work that was constructed by Renée Bourassa, in 1985. A very strong work this is, with craftily pronounced text by Openheimer, Shaw, Kant, Rutherford and Bourassa. Interestingly the aural part of this worksounds a bit dated because of use of so typical digital instrumentation especially in the parts approximately from the 5th until the 10th minute and at multiple occasions later in the piece. Sampler, synclavier, however modern and high tech they were in 1985, they sound ancient in 2007. As a whole a very strong work, though. The piece feels a bit like Laurie Anderson who was popular at the time. The next work is Moll, opéra lilliput pour six roches molles. This is the oldest work, dating from 1976. this is the only piece that also involves acoustic instruments (clarinets, trombones, percussion and toys). The work is versatile, exciting and a very good mixture of electronics and fantastic craftmanship on the instruments. The booklet tells us that “this suite of 17 miniatures is the result of long, obsessive hours spent looking at the ordinary gray pebbles on the Bas-Saint Laurent beaches”. That gives it lovely exotic touch (especially when I hear the small children’s voice singing a song, while typing) but the work itself is already good enough without any exotic liner notes. It’s brilliant and the world could have known as early as 1976 that with Deschênes a very fine composer. Alright then, the final piece: Big Bang III: an hommage to Earth. 2 minutes 38 seconds, a soundscape to accompany a 3D film at the planetarium. And that’s all I have to say about it. Well done, but I would not have entered it in this collection. Ending with Moll would have blasted me away. This is sort of a disappointment, albeit a short/small one.
top
Recensionein Ultrasonica (Italy), June 7, 2007 |6297|
“… e ascoltarlo più volte per dare un’interpretazione personale come
richiede il genere. Consigliato agli amanti del genere.”
Compositrice, pianista e artista multimediale, una delle poche donne che possono fregiarsi dell’appellativo di ‘Pioniera’ nel campo della sperimentazione e della musica elettroacustica, divisa tra carriera artistica, puro piacere per la sperimentazione e insegnamento di arti multimediali. Poche righe per tentare di dare un’idea sul personaggio protagonista di questa uscita ‘discografica’, sei ‘piece’ scritte tra il 1976 ed il 2002 per accompagnare di volta in volta installazioni olografiche, show multimediali e vere e proprie composizioni per ensamble acustiche e nastri (alla maniera del buon Stockhausen). Difficile trasmettere a parole le sensazioni date da questa release in DVD-Audio (la prima che mi capita) accompagnata dalle immagini realizzate dall’artista. L’invito è quello di andare a ricercare questo disco (distribuito dalla empreintes DIGITALes) e ascoltarlo più volte per dare un’interpretazione personale come richiede il genere. Consigliato agli amanti del genere. 3,5/5
top
Reviewby Massimo Ricci in Touching Extremes (Italy), June 1, 2007 |6291|
“… petits Big
Bangs… belongs in the highest rank of contemporary acousmatics.”
Although Canadian pianist and composer Deschênes has been active for decades in various areas of new music, having undergone training with the likes of Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry and Guy Reibel and founding CEC (Canadian Electroacoustic Community), besides being a main presence in many other collaborations and exhibitions, petits Big Bangs is her first official recording to date, and it’s all the more perplexing that this artist’s expression still hasn’t been duly diffused on a worldwide scale, like it happens for many less deserving but probably better connected entities. In the five pieces comprised by this DVD we experience both the technical mastery and, dare I say, the attitude of a woman that marks her own territory in different sonic regions with a blend of visionary elasticity and historical perspective. As a matter of fact, Deschênes uses many references — often liberally borrowing snippets of material from her colleagues’ output — to generate sound worlds that contain unpredictable expansions, infinite meanings and interpretations of a sensorial attack that often moves on the verge of schizophrenia, yet is dramatically charged with intense beauty, that kind of pleasure deriving from the sheer force of the elements, being them natural or studio-generated. Deschênes is able to exploit the multitude of shades of her electroacoustic palette by not limiting herself to theatricality (although human voice is often utilized to daze and confuse into further interconnections) and also by sapiently fusing actual instruments and tapework, like in Moll, opéra lilliput pour six roches molles in which clarinet, trombone and percussion contribute to a “transposition of children’s dreams of sea” with mind-altering results. Not an easy listen, for sure spiritually remunerative, petits Big Bangs is one of those sleepers that should instead be jet-propelled to a wider attention, as it belongs in the highest rank of contemporary acousmatics.
top
Mirages acoustiquesin Solénoïde (France), May 21, 2007 |6295|
“… un univers expansif, vif et lumineux…”
Au travers de six plages éblouissantes, le label montréalais nous propose un survol attractif de l’œuvre de cette compositrice méconnue. Une sélection qui, de 1976 à 2002, nous emmène dans un univers expansif, vif et lumineux à l’intérieur duquel notre imaginaire se laisse avantageusement abuser.
top
Front Fiveby Eric Hill in Exclaim! (Canada), May 1, 2007 |6319|
“… this increased transparency of delivery removes the tinted glass between
artist and listener.”
Imagine an abstract painter working long hours to refine the tensions and balances of colour and composition of a work only to then have the gallery exhibit it behind a pane of tinted glass. A similar technological restriction for artists in the realm of electroacoustic music has been lifted by Québec’s Empreintes Digitales label. Since 2005, select releases have been mastered to DVD-A, including recent works by Darren Copeland, Marcelle Deschênes and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay. The DVD-A discs offer stereo or Surround 5.1 mixes in 96khz/24 bit sound for dedicated players, higher quality stereo mixes for regular DVD players, and even high-end MP3 mixes for your walkabout electroacoustic needs. For an art form whose main ethos is the meticulous treatment of sound, this increased transparency of delivery removes the tinted glass between artist and listener.
top
Kritikby Rigobert Dittmann in Bad Alchemy #54 (Germany), May 1, 2007 |6273| Zur gegenwärtigen Selbstverständlichkeit von Electronica von Frauenhand führt eine nur dünne Linie von Pionierinnen - Daphne Oram (1925-2003), Pauline Oliveros (*1932), Éliane Radigue (*1932), Maryanne Amacher (*1943), Michèle Bokanowski (*1943), Annette Vande Gorne (*1946), Hildegard Westerkamp (*1946), Christina Kubisch (*1948), Hanna Hartman (*1961), Sarah Peebles (*1964)… Die Kanadierin Marcelle Deschênes (*1939) ist eine von ihnen, eine multimedial und an Mixtechniken interessierte Kapazität, die von 1980-97 an der Université de Montréal lehrte. Die Titeltracks von petits Big Bangs (IMED 0681, DVD-Audio), ‚Big Bang II & III‘, gehören zur Tonspur einer postnukleardystopischen Multimediainstallation. ‚Indigo‘ & ‚Le bruit des ailes‘ bilden die Auftaktkapitel zu ‚Griffes‘ (2000-), eine Arbeit, die, angeregt durch Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Women who run with the wolves) und Marie-Louise von Franz, die ‚Wilde Frau‘ zum Thema macht, wobei Märchenmotive aus Blaubart, Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot und HC Andersens Hässliches kleines Entlein eingearbeitet wurden. ‚Lux‘ (1985) spielt mit dem mythischen Kreislauf von Sonne und Mond, Tag und Nacht. ‚Moll, opéra lilliput pour six roches molles‘ (1976) für Klarinetten, Posaunen, Percussion, Toys & Tonband wirft Traumblicke auf den Strand, das Meer und den Himmel darüber, klickert mit Muscheln und Kieselsteinen und trifft nicht schlecht einen Ton, der zwischen skurril und surreal vexiert. Der Mut zu großen Themen und den zeitlosen Stoffen von Mythen, Märchen und Erzählungen verrät Deschênes Nähe zur GRM-Schule. Stimmsamples und Collagen, die eigene Arbeiten und die von Kollegen ‚kannibalisieren‘, und eine dadurch inszenierte hochgradige Dramatik, etwa das vulkanische und von Nukleartests herrührende Grollen oder Splittern von Eis bei ‚Le bruit des ailes‘, sind typische Stilelemente. Zwischen archaischen Bindungen und Motiven des Begehrens - ‚Lux‘ beginnt mit einem gekeuchten „Desire“ - und der Befreiung, zwischen katastrophalen Ausgängen und Momenten des Gelingens entsteht hörbar Spannung. Deschênes nähert sich dem „Bereich der Gelüste“, der dunklen Geheimnisse und der Träume mit jener Tapferkeit, die laut allen Märchen zum ‚Volksvermögen‘ gehört.
top
Hommage à une pionnière de l’électroacoustiqueby Marie Lambert-Chan in Forum (Québec), April 23, 2007 |6276|
top
Discosin Modisti (Spain), March 15, 2007 |6261|
“… the work of this composer features a marked visual line, exploring spatial
vastness, evoking dimensions in the distance…”
Thoroughly concerned with the enormity of space, the work of this composer features a marked visual line, exploring spatial vastness, evoking dimensions in the distance, as seen through a wide lens, focusing on the sheer size of the portrayed. The deep experience of spatial movement pays homage to cinema while the experience of witnessing sound sources within a three-dimensional space is blended with that of orchestras and choirs. Discos
“… la obra de esta compositora, que tiene un carácter marcadamente visual y
explora la vastedad espacial, evocando dimensiones lejanas…”
Un profundo interés por la enormidad del espacio caracteriza la obra de esta compositora, que tiene un carácter marcadamente visual y explora la vastedad espacial, evocando dimensiones lejanas, como se ven a través de un ojo de pez, centrándose en la mera escala de lo retratado. La profunda experiencia del movimiento espacial rinde tributo al cine, mientras que la experiencia de fuentes sonoras en un espacio tridimensional se funde con la de la orquesta y el coro.
top
Reviewby François Couture in All-Music Guide (USA), January 11, 2007 |6225|
“… a personal touch that empowers her music with a level of immediacy rarely
attained in that most abstract field of music.”
With petits Big Bangs, the empreintes DIGITALes label rights a painful wrong. This fully-packed album offers a stunning retrospective of Marcelle Deschênes’ electroacoustic works, from 1976 to 2002. If Deschênes is less known among musique concrete aficionados than Francis Dhomont, Jonty Harrison or even Robert Normandeau, it is mostly because she has devoted a considerable amount of energy to pioneering multimedia and pluridisciplinary works that cannot be documented on LP or CD. The six tape pieces presented here reveal a sensitive and whimsical composer possessing the plastic flair of Dhomont, the unsettling poetic sense of a Michel Chion, and a personal touch that empowers her music with a level of immediacy rarely attained in that most abstract field of music. The post-apocalyptic Big Bang II from 1987 opens the album with a commanding ballet of dynamic extremes. Indigo and Le bruit des ailes, both more recent, are elegant compositions with sombre undercurrents that keep dragging the listener along in search of their ever-deeper meanings. The two longer tracks of the set are also the oldest ones; if Lux (1985) fails to captivate through its whole duration, Moll, opéra lilliput pour six roches molles provides the album’s highlight. Written for clarinets, trombones, percussion, toys and tape, this “Lilliputian opera for six soft pebbles” is a fascinating piece of cinema for the ear, with a childlike lightness counterbalanced by disquieting water imagery. empreintes DIGITALes has released a handful of albums in 2006, some by household names and others by young up-and-coming composers, but the one that stands out is Deschênes’ petits Big Bangs, for its unique poetic qualities. This album has been released as a DVD. The disc contains the same six pieces in 96kHz/24bit MLP stereo (DVD-Audio), 48kHz/24bit standard stereo (DVD-Video), and MP3 files (DVD-ROM).
top
Reviewby Ingvar Loco Nordin in Sonoloco Record Reviews (Sweden), January 1, 2007 |6226|
“Marcelle Deschênes has given
me one of my most intense sound art experiences ever.”
Marcelle Deschênes (1939) is an experienced art worker in various disciplines like composing, piano playing, teaching, multimedia, photography, video art, radio art and more. Her teachers include legends like Pierre Schaeffer, François Bayle and Guy Reibel. Track 1. Big Bang II (1987, 1995) [7:40] Marcelle Deschênes’ music here is part of a multimedia installation by George Dyens, dealing with a post-nuclear situation void of human beings. This is the end of the world as we know it. The work was composed in 1987 for the multimedia work and then remixed in 1995 by Louis Dufort. The sound world that opens its vast plains is eerie, as it ought to be, after a war that tore us all away into flakes of soot. Deep murmurs vibrate, panning strangely, while sharp, gray sand sounds penetrate the hypothetical listener’s eyes and ears and nostrils with radiating grains that will light flares inside all his cells. The doomsday audio of this scary music reminds me of a short electronic piece by Folke Rabe from 1985 called Cyclone, which Folke says is almost to depressive to hear. Somewhere midway into this layered, soaring aftermath a sound reminiscent of a distant choir appears; an angelic procession deep inside matter and radiation; messengers from another dimension far beyond the pettiness of Bush-time stupidity… or is it just the wind howling through shreds of armored trucks littering the memories of the dead? Even farther into this dark vision, grotesque vocal mimicries call forth images from the transient bardo states between lives, which all men have to travel collectively, given the civilization crash circumstances of this music, dodging the scarecrows of their own conscience on their futile, shadowy journey towards re-birth. Track 2 - 3. Griffes (2000-) [21:36] Track 2. Indigo (2000) [10:40] Griffes is a work in progress; its first two parts presented here. Marcelle Deschênes has let herself become inspired by the psychoanalytic research of Clarissa Pinkola Estés and Marie-Louise von Franz. It’s all about archetypical wild females from myths, dreams and tales. The ambience is… spacious, immense… overpowering like thunder, but also harboring the still, convincing vocals of long-ago faiths… for a short instance, until big slabs of ice and rock audio crash right in front of you, bringing up unidentified monks in deep chanting. Just about here the ambience changes into a small, closed-in area, which in turn is transformed into dark drones and more violent granite tumbleweeds rocketing away in massive slides. This is very unusual, mighty compelling electroacoustic music; the feeling resembling Pierre Henry’s Le Livre des morts égyptien - which is based on the sounds of a piano, but which conveys the same dark ambience and fateful moor roars in the distance as Deschênes’ Indigo. The imperceptible transformations from totally alien landscapes under the glaciers to the soaring beauty of angelic choirs and the deep murmurs of monks in a hidden-away monastery in Tibet, to the side of a rippling brook or the humid heat at a Pacific beach, sharpens the attention of the listener. I take this sounding art more seriously than most of the things I’ve heard lately, in electroacoustics. Marcelle Deschênes has her very own voice in this art form. It doesn’t matter that this piece indeed quotes Bernard Fort, Gilles Gobeil and Jean-François Laporte. Marcelle Deschênes weaves her own tapestry around these quotes. Listening to her is like sweeping a magician’s black cloth around your shoulders. Track 3. Le bruit des ailes (2000, 2002) [10:54] Marcelle Deschênes has a motto for this piece: “To all those who feel the urge to stretch their wings” - and surely, if you haven’t, you have lived in vain, for sure, in vain! In Le bruit des ailes the composer utilizes the sounding testimonies of ice storms, erupting volcanoes and nuclear tests! She also quotes some of her own pieces: Écran humain (1983), Lux (1985), D-503 (1987) and Ludi (1990). I might insert here that I read the rich and poetic, complex notes that are provided for each piece on the CD, without knowing who wrote them, but I see now that Deschênes wrote them herself, so she is absolutely a writer and a poet! The looming, rumbling sound that opens the event is so low-pitched that you almost feel it more than you hear it, in your anatomy, like an eruption from within, the way climate change and disappearances of livelihoods would sound, did they sound… These are worlds trembling at the prospect of annihilation and doomsday transformation. I get the notion of a kinship with Pierre Henry again, since he also brings these dark nuances into play all through the lower chakras. Fluttering of birds’ wings out of dry leaves and underbrush suddenly brings the focus up very close, right in your face, in a body-tight off-guardness, as opposed to the murmur of the threat in the distance. I can feel the smell of humid fear as doom looms. I can feel animal fear right up my nostrils. After a little while these sounds all transform into a trans-real realm, clicking into a thought-stream that soars into shaman layers of existence that shoot like jet streams above the transient circuits of daily familiarities. Sudden violent eruptions crash right by, avalanches of snow and mud, overwhelming lahars sweeping everything away in their massive torrents. My earphones almost can’t withstand this kind of audio. They weren’t made with volcanic eruptions in mind. As I write this, a jetliner at an airport a few kilometers away roars to a start, bound for Stanstead in England, and for a moment I’m not sure what is Deschênes; what is Ryanair! The airwaves mix in this Cagean soundscape of the moment. This tumbling rock and debris motion also transform into an embellished drone of surreal beauty. Deschênes handles these gliding passages from brute naturalism to Apollonian mindscapes with expertise, bringing you clear from pain to soaring pleasure in alleviating ascensions into space shuttle orbits, high above the mud strife of daily life. Into this lucid sphere of lightness and mind hall atmospheres she introduces splintered glass sonorities that tinkle and twinkle like stars in the void and their piercing reflections on a nocturnal sheet of crusted Lapland snow. Many whirls and eddies in the sound sweep by, confusing the overall motion with their deviations. Static crackling and eerie birdcalls mix into the drone episode, further amplifying the sense of imminent danger. Suddenly the course of events slow down, as if encountering thick glue or congested time… and the music moves dreamlike, in a manner of a held-back chronology, clamped between the palpability of the Here and the Now in an impossible dimensional loop. Everything is forced to stop and think, as time and space curl up in a super-gravitational grip. Time is taking a time-out. A wave motion of jingling, jangling jawbone audio washes the shores of perception, as time towers in the distance, ready to crash in on us again… Beautiful overtone drones carrying earth-colored atmospheres with violet birdcalls surround you like some hesitating dawn, yawning at the periphery of existence. High-pitch events talk to you on an ascended level of communication, while all sorts of things happen all through the lower realms, in this illusionary confinement of the body. Time still gathers strength at a hypothetical horizon. Towards the end of Le bruit des ailes time breaks through the latticework of stolen moments in a dimensional upstream, crashing down on the listener in bits and pieces of decades and centuries and millennia and a splintering storm of heres and nows, causing an auditory mish-mash of history to fall by into a future that proves just as arbitrary as any randomly encountered section of the space-time continuum. God does play dice… Track 4. Lux (1985) [23:16] Lux is the audio part of a multimedia presentation by Renée Bourassa. It contains quotes from Alain Thibault’s OUT (1985) and Quarks’ Muzik (1983), as well as Deschênes’ own deUs irae (1984). Texts by Shaw, Rutherford, Oppenheimer, Kant and Bourassa are also quoted. Vocals are provided by Gaël Andrews. The change alone from the alien desolation and distant danger of the preceding work raises an eyebrow (mine!). Here we seem to tread a fairytale out of the Grimm Brothers in a sound-poetic setting. The repetitious, dribbling words of desire at the outset take on grotesque qualities as the goblin retreats into Deschênes’ soundscape while more intelligible, purely human sentences of reasoning argue up front. The composer ventures into a great electroacoustic tradition here, from the French school, sporting names like Bernard Heidsieck, Henri Chopin, Antonin Artaud, François Dufrêne and certainly Michel Chion; that great tradition of speech permutations, electronics and melodrama, which has also been richly represented on the two famous series from Bourges: Cultures électroniques and Chrysopée électronique - that particular segment of electroacoustic music, musique concrète and melodrama that I enjoy the most! It’s a long work, which changes drastically along the way, even including sections with funkhouse drum machines that I don’t like much, but you got to take it, the bitter with the sweet… The elastic, extended Tibetan monks are more in my line of duty, so to say! Their voices are spread out like a layer of honey across rye bread, until falling silent, giving way to prickly, glassy dots of pointillism, in turn mixing with backwards speech blurred and obscured by neighbor wall filters, but clearly audible wordings are poured down your back, concerning the Manhattan Project and the first great steps towards annihilation along the path of sincere human stupidity. Track 5. Moll, opéra lilliput pour six roches molles (1976) [22:55] for 2 clarinets, 3 trombones, 3 percussion groups, toys and tape. This work is an old acquaintance of mine, since it appeared on Cultures électroniques 7 in 1994, in the section Coda mémoire. It won the mixed music 1st prize in Bourges 1978. This work is dedicated to our temporary body, in a series of 17 miniatures that rose out of Deschênes’ “prolonged and obsessive” observations of little stones on the beach at St Laurent. The work has to do with “the slow wearing-down caused by the passage of time”. Deschênes deliberates on these events, lifting them to a level where they show significance on micro and macro levels, the way the universe works, on the level of galaxies and on the level of the atomic jitter. One drop falling into water… The space that is apparent from the echo suggest a subterranean facility of some kind; a sewage, perhaps, or the forlorn landscapes of Tarkovsky’s zone in Stalker - or the dangerous habitat of the dark beings of The Time Machine, the Morlocks… And this is only one single drop hitting the surface. Then starts a panning, gray, mighty wind event, hither and thither, sweeping you this-a-way and that-a-way. After a while this gushing wind seems to transform into waves rolling onto a beach. These are the smoothing and evening forces of nature on solid states of matter. Instruments and voices mix in with the wind and the waves in a brilliant way. This is done so sensitively and yet so intrusively and almost brutally, that it makes me want to laugh! It’s state of the art electroacoustics; the mixed form. Outlandish! If you haven’t heard this you have no idea what electroacoustic composition can be, in the hands of a poetic expert! Fantastic! I don’t know to what extent the musicians play live. I suppose they’re pre-recorded and then mixed in. Either way, their efforts bring the arts a bit further towards enlightenment. It’s an intellectual as well as an emotional and purely artistic pleasure to hear this work! Marcelle Deschênes 1968 (self portrait) So many things happen. The wind and the waves cease, and all the small sounds of the instruments and from tapes and electronically generated sources rise and shine in a bewildering and all but smoldering top-of-the-line menagerie of auditory excellence! Midway a wild bamboo percussion dance stirs the dust from the hard earthen floor of the village meeting-place, while Tibetan monks blow their giant horns up the slopes, echoing back and forth through the mountain passes where prayer fliers rattle in the wind. A gentle, jazzy miniature edges over into a dreamy electroacoustism, which breaks and stoops forward, elastically… into beautiful, layered sighs out of the vast fatigue of existence. Jingly hinges screech from inside a passing moment. For a while, the music is a magnifying glass, passed across the minute details of the duration. Spells are cast and broken in sharp percussive exclamations. Lingering thoughts extend through the stratosphere in pitches high as the sky; tracers across the canopy of heaven. This music makes me happy. A little child’s nursery rhyme comes naturally under these open skies: yet another spirit lighting up in these parts of the universe! Track 6. Big Bang III (1992) [2:38] This music is also designed for a multimedia installation by George Dyens. Has to do with celebrating life in all its forms and the far of its demise… Marcelle Deschênes concludes this amazing and wonderful CD with a short piece sporting the classical insignia of the French style electroacoustics of the latter part of the 20th century, in harsh progressions through dark landscapes, across terrains that can only be approximately sensed through a perceptual haze. Sometimes the thoughts come at you in large, irregular slabs of dense matter; at other times they’re fragmented into grains of auditory morphemes; sprays of anguish showering you in droning episodes of amnesia… Marcelle Deschênes has given me one of my most intense sound art experiences ever.
top
Creating and Contributing: The Expansive Spirit of Marcelle Deschênesby Rosemary Mountain in Musicworks #86 (Canada), June 1, 2003 |6186|
“… Her compositions are truly expressive of human emotions…”
[…] (Deschênes) can shape any and all sounds exactly to match whatever form or phrase she envisions. Her compositions are truly expressive of human emotions rather than being explorations of sound, and she avoids the common pitfall of creating dizzying configurations in surround sound, despite the context of the early of-art images used in works like Écran Humain (with Paul Saint-Jean) and Lux (with Renée Bourassa). […]
top
Holographie, électroacoustique et… Big bang !by Marie-Claude Gagnon in Journal d’Outremont (Québec), November 1, 1992 |6188|
top
The 1987 International Computer Music Conference: A Reviewby JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, Robert Morris in Perspectives of New Music #26:1 (USA), January 1, 1988 |6184|
“… she has a brilliant mind for effect.”
[…] Deschênes is a well known French-Canadian performance artist working in the dance / mixed media tradition of Alvin Nicolais. And like Nicolais, she has a brilliant mind for effect. […] Judging from the adulations of the audience, the experience must have evoked some of the same fever as the 1951 production in Paris of The Veil of Orpheus with musique concrète by Pierre Henry. […]
top
Cinéscience - La science à l’écranby Gérarld Baril in Québec Science (Québec), June 1, 1986 |6177|
“… à la fois hautement technologique et généreux à vous couper le
souffle…”
[…] Admirable synthèse que ce spectacle, à la fois hautement technologique et généreux à vous couper le souffle… L’écran s’avance lentement, remplissant la salle d’émoi… La musique est également au premier plan, imposant le rythme. Non pas roulement de tambour, mais crépitement de brasier ponctué d’explosions, de crises. Dans l’assistance, devant ce monde qui se fait et se défait, les yeux s’écarquillent. Un sourire hébété reste figé sur les lèvres du spectateur quand, après 30 vertigineuses minutes, son rêve éveillé prend fin… Le plaisir de Lux naît de la rigueur… Lux pousse la technique multimédia plus loin que tout ce qu’on avait vu dans le genre jusqu’à maintenant… La grande cohérence, la puissance évocatrice de Lux ne peuvent être issues que d’une démarche artistique dont les manifestations n’ont pas fini de nous étonner. […]
top
[À propos de Lux]by Jean-Philippe Beaudin in Le Devoir (Québec), December 7, 1985 |6174|
“… extraordinaire ballet kaléidoscopique…”
[…] Lux a été une expérience sonore et visuelle tout simplement éblouissante. On n’est pas prêt d’oublier cet extraordinaire ballet kaléidoscopique qui a été une véritable fête pour l’œil et pour l’oreille. Devant l’ampleur d’une telle réussite, on peut se demander si la simple formule du concert rend vraiment justice à la musique dite contemporaine… Une œuvre «multimédia» comme Lux, que nous sommes presque tentés de qualifier de chef d’œuvre, a certainement de quoi séduire les auditeurs qui se montrent les plus récalcitrants à la musique moderne. […] other texts in
electrocd.com Marcelle Deschênes: petits Big Bangs: reviews |
>> | |||||
| << | >> |






