Graffiti
by Bruce Gottlieb
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The son of a Breton and an Algerian, Ned
Bouhalassa buried his mongrel pedigree in the ascetic study of audio
phenomenology. Electroacoustics promised to release forever those troubling
sentimental attachments he had to music. In the tradition of Dhomont, Bouhalassa’s assiduous
experiments in acousmatic art conjured stark and disconcerting works.
Attraction is his nihilistic apogee, reducing all
existence to magnetic impulses that collide violently or hurtle away.
As the attention and the kudos crackled down on him in the rarefied
ground-zero of a multi-speaker acousmatic array, Bouhalassa’s appetite for musical adventure forced him out into
the streets for fresh sustenance. Soon, he would be found flipping through
the chart-toppers at the record store and wigging out to Nirvana, Sonic Youth and Public Enemy, admiring their volatile and spontaneous sonorities
and passion. There is plenty for an electroacoustician’s ear in this music,
if you don’t mind it ringing after the show. Over the years, Bouhalassa’s work in film, television, and multimedia
soundtracks has considerably broadened his interests and compositional
palette. His recent work revels in this cross-genre electronic
sensibility.
Ned Bouhalassa, along with Alain Thibault and Louis Dufort, is
among a new group of electroacoustic composers that is stepping away from its
sound-dissecting apparatus and venturing downtown to mill among the
undergrads at steamy venues. The science of sound is being practiced expertly
and with great sophistication in the commercial music industry — and these
new composers thrive on the amazing innovations and creative energy of this
voracious business.
Aérosol shows the evolution of a humble young
composer from the grim satisfactions of academic rigor to the burgeoning
suppleness of his present work. Jets is ideal
chill-out music, cinematic, atmospheric and ceremonial, recatalyzing the
coherence of past impressions in wonder. Visionary sound stimulus for all
citizens of the future.
Bruce Gottlieb, Montréal [x-98]
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