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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