| << |
electroradio
pour ajouter à votre panier, cliquez le prix (le prix inclut toujours la manutention et le port)
haut
Territorial Imperatives: Canada’s boldest and brightest labels…par Tobias C van Veen in e|i magazine #4 (ÉU), 1 juin 2005 |968|
«… a prolific label for electroacoustic music as well as provocative experiments in
conceptual sound.»
[…] The minimum one can say of empreintes DIGITALes is that it is a prolific label for electroacoustic music as well as provocative experiments in conceptual sound. A few recent releases graft the varied interests of academic and acousmatic music together via the intriguing work of, say, John Oswald. His Aparanthesi is the work of a single note that is gradually inflected along its pitch and combined with various tuned field recordings. [aparanthesi A] is an A note tuned to 440 Hz, which is the broadcast signal stations play when off-air. [aparanthesi B] is a compressed stereo image of the 8 channel performance created for 2000’s Rien à voir electroacoustic festival in Montréal. It is tuned to 480 Hz, the North American electrical standard, so it is in-tune with the hum of lighting and electrical grids. It is also a sonic impression of a complex and involved performance that uprooted the audience from the seats to the atrium and back again. We might call the album a conceptual play between electroacoustc and microsound, audience and chair, sitting and standing, tuning and silence, and for these reasons, the listening experience is very unlike the genre’s contemporaries. Roxanne Turcotte, for example, produces a melange of disjunctive sound, voice and phone recordings, environmental atmospheres and world beat rhythms on Libellune, which features work dating back to 1985. Its complexity at times is interesting, for as a survey of her œuvre it mirrors the development of Montréal electroacoustic in its infatuation with voice and, like R Murray Schafer, the natural world. That said, it remains well within the by now well-established parameters of academic composition. Paul Dolden’s work trammels from New Music composition to electroacoustic, employing repetiton and choral arrangements in a fashion not unlike that of Philip Glass, albeit with a drive toward melodrama and punch over satyagraha, throwing in all elements including the kitchen throughout L’ivresse de la vitesse 1 and 2. Like Turcotte, this work too spans from the ‘80s to the ‘90s, and so much of its feel is like listening to a beloved but aging record from that era, its metallic drums and neon wildness only appearing just a tad navel-gazing with age. Dolden is somewhat overwhelming; [L’ivresse de la vitesse] is a nightmare collage at its start that quickly gets into squeaky territory. For this, the remedy of Seuil de silences is welcome. Although from the same era, its breathing space offers more time for reflection, arrangement and thought, even if the disharmonius creeps back into the picture and becomes an ultimate ode to piano-bashing. […]
haut
Reviewpar Grant Chu Covell in La Folia (ÉU), 1 mars 2005 |6006|
«Today’s tools make his restless works shine and vibrate. His rapid pace would stun a
defibrillator.»
Lucky Dolden, for having time and opportunity to remaster old ea compositions with digital technology. While these pieces aren’t exactly prehistoric, 1990’s analogue assembly and track-bouncing fogged the clarity of Dolden’s style: He notates a passage for 100 or more acoustic instruments, records each part individually, then mixes them in the studio. Today’s tools make his restless works shine and vibrate. His rapid pace would stun a defibrillator. The most representative piece here, Caught in an Octagon of Unaccustomed Light, aligns nonstandard tuning with the burr and hum of struck metal, possibly prepared piano and cymbals. Is the heaving material in a kaleidoscope or meat grinder? I imagine the different threads marshalling themselves like eager, acquiescent robots, only to scatter suddenly into dust: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice meets Metropolis. Disjointed episodes serendipitously linked, Below the Walls of Jericho isn’t a Biblical illustration. Dolden fancies the idea that sound could bring down a wall and his piece could do just that. In the Natural Doorway I Crouch pulses with plucked strings and wind instruments. Dolden happily joins his tapes with live instruments. Gravity’s Stillness. Resonance #6 features solo violin (Julie-Anne Derome) and The Vertigo of Ritualized Frenzy. Resonance #4 has parts for clarinet (François Houle) and piano (Leslie Wyber). The live musicians occasionally succumb to the blitz or else are instantly echoed and multiplied. In … Vertigo… , the duo labors mostly in unison on a increasingly numbing modal phrase while the entire world swirls ’round. Gravity’s Stillness… starts with uncharacteristically delicate washes under the violin, but soon erupts into business as usual. Seuil de silences’ companions are L’ivresse de la vitesse 1 and L’ivresse de la vitesse 2, two wonderfully titled discs with remastered pieces — actually Dolden’s third time through them. Several interconnected series straddle the three discs, some for tape alone, others requiring instruments to duel alongside. Try any.
haut
Reviewpar Ingvar Loco Nordin in Sonoloco Record Reviews (Suède), 15 décembre 2003 |674|
«This boy certainly wants to invade all your senses and completely take them over.»
Paul Dolden and empreintes DIGITALes throw three new Dolden CDs at us simultaneously, in an unparalleled marketing of one single composer’s work. However, it’s not as strange as it may sound, but really quite an interesting and rewarding venture, because it has to do with reissues of old material, remastered by the composer with modern equipment. Dolden is one of the most prolific electroacousticians, and for sure his oeuvre deserves to be revisited, especially after its recent technical and artistic brush-up. Paul Dolden explains: “In the late 1970s I started to write and produce music involving hundreds of parts or tracks. In the early days the analogue recording medium was very noisy when bouncing (or premixing) tracks together. Things improved throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but a large multitrack digital tape recorder was still out of my financial reach. By the late 1990s the new computer and hard drive speeds finally provided me with an affordable multitrack solution. For the first time in my life I was able to achieve the balance between individual voices that I had so carefully notated in the original scores. I achieved further musical clarity and a new depth of sound by using quality compression, equalization and reverb. To remaster, I went back to the individual tracks. This was a huge undertaking. For example, a piece like Dancing on the Walls of Jericho may be only 16 minutes and 15 seconds long, but it is a large tape work comprising eighty hours of original recorded materials. Recordings always freeze or crystallize musical and spectral meaning for the listener. An odd sound combination that you have grown fond of in the old master may not appear in the same way in the new one. However, I think you will agree that I have stayed true to the original compositions. I changed some musical moments and transitions in Dancing on the Walls of Jericho, and the tape components for Physics of Seduction, Invocations #2 and #3, all originally released on the L’ivresse de la vitesse CD in 1994. These changes were motivated by compositional concerns and were created using the musical materials from the Walls Cycle. The only new recordings made for the remastering process were the drum parts (performed by Philippe Keyser) in Physics of Seduction, Invocations #2 and #3. I invite you to discover my new levels of meaning and clarity in the new masters, which are much closer to my original artistic intention.” L’ivresse de la vitesse (Intoxication by Speed) (1992-93). Dolden: “The title […] is an allusion towards my current artistic intentions which involve the speeding up of an excess of musical ideas so that the composition and its materials exhaust themselves in the shortest time possible. The intoxicating aspect of speed is evoked by using primarily fast tempo markings and rapid changes in orchestration, density and dynamics. These elements can be particularly sped up to the point of exhaustion and intoxication in the digital audio studio which is limitless or virtual in its color and density possibilities.” There is no mercy administered, and no time to adapt; you’re in the surging midst of sound the second it commences. However, the rush of grainy properties very soon take on more familiar guises, as male and female choirs rise, in a strictly vocal kind of soaring surge, gushing forth like mountain rapids below the glaciers. Sure this is intoxication by speed, secularly perhaps a shoot down the rapids, but in a shaman way perhaps a transposed inner journey of the Bardos… A creaking violin - bow pressing hard on the strings - open up a closed room of whispers, eventually pulling threads and shreds of surrounding reality along in marked pushes and layers of audio, snow-balling, mud-sliding into an immense might, eventually sneaking up on a hasty march of sorts, comically and quire remarkably, all behind a curtain of a certain unreality… There are, however, short retreats of church-like bliss here and there, before the blushing hell of over-intensified motion again grabs you by the neck and throws you downtime, as age and matter are subsequented… Physics of Seduction. Invocation #3 (1992) for cello and tape; Peggy Lee [cello]. Dolden: “By using an extreme amount of ordinary musical sounds and gestures, their reality becomes more real than real. In other words, the sounds escape the networks of meaning and association, which have built up the reality of our world. This compositional strategy, involving an escalation to extremes, means that the materials themselves disappear as they implode inward and take on new appearances. The realm of seduction involves the strategies of appearances. As a contemporary composer, all that I can hope for is that I have provided the physics, or the interaction of motion and energy, for your own seduction.” This long work opens in an industrial scenery; at least this is the initial impression: steelworks or shipyard - but soon, very soon, the cello comes to the fore or semi-fore, out of a layer of thick and dense material where it seems caught and predestined to a captive state of existence, albeit sometimes really in front of the wobbling, dancing, heavy backdrop. I’m talking about the first couple of minutes. The cello sets out on strutting, daring escape routes in and out of the seaweed density of sounds, and I imagine someone’s arms feeling their way through the dense and the dark, a grainy and not completely wholesome kind of predicament. Dolden has taken all he’s got and filled up life to its hypothetical rim. The cello saws frantically at some aspects of reality, like an insect inside a jar, desperately trying something impossible, as burning thoughts come up for air and light up matter from inside like electric impulses flaring through cerebral cortexes… Slow, meditative solo parts are offered the cello, as the barnstorming audio completely disappears below and behind. The cello talks like a candle in a nocturnal forest, or like a thought roaming a closed-down mind; a Moomin Troll waking in the middle of Finnish winter, rising prematurely out of hibernation to roam the snowy pastures, discovering unknown properties of existence. Revenge of the Repressed. Resonance #2 (1993) for soprano sax and tape; François Houle [soprano sax] Dolden: “As the end of the second millennium approaches [remember, these remarks were written for the original release], we increasingly deal with the angry fallout from our historical legacy. Society turns into a constant search for what has been repressed and denied and we search for some form of revenge for our victimization. However, given that our lives have basically become an extension of the mediascape, and real power lies elsewhere, we become trapped in an endless life-sized Nintendo game seeking justice and revenge.” A jazzy, feverish jinglish kind of beginning moves through the Coltrane-scape of late day paraphernalia, surprisingly slowing down into mild brass sections in a golden hue - only to pick up speed and frantics again, leaving you… breathless and thoughtless, screwing those saxophones right down into the rock bottom, for what it’s worth… I have no idea how Dolden’s words above correspond to these sounds, mind you… but the show goes on, with or without whatever one is with or without… In here Dolden even manages to sound like Dutch hey-day desperado Louis Andriessen in Dee Staat, punching those semi-jazzy stanzas at you, like sleet blowing in your face on your way to colon x-ray… Dancing on the Walls of Jericho (1990). Dolden: “Dancing on the Walls of Jericho is the second of a three-part composition, which philosophically addresses the idea of revolution. Part two continues from where part one, Below the Walls of Jericho, had ended. Part one acted as a metaphor for the idea of social change through revolution. Therefore part one was primarily concerned with the vertical monolith and its tearing down by the anonymous massed texture of four hundred tracks of sound. By contrast, part two celebrates this tearing down with a constant polyrhythmic dance on the rubble and the use of extroverted solistic gestures.” Polishing sounds wipe the curving walls of a contrast medium drenched tunnel, which eventually is filling up with a torrent of audio from the treacherous ill will of the toppling-over sonic ingenuity of Mr. Dolden. This boy certainly wants to invade all your senses and completely take them over. He needs your FULL attention, and if he doesn’t get it right away, he just stuffs you like a fat duck and leaves you sleepless. Much to my surprise, though, the frenzy cools off here, into a gamelan-like limp through the tunnel, and is it the tunnel that near-death experiencers experience on their near-death sojourns, or is it just a leaking realm of boring through the mount, to have you pass ten minutes faster on the train for a sum of 10 billion dollars? No idea! There isn’t much time to contemplate suicide, though, since I get caught up in more sturdy, bouncing limping down the path Dolden doodles, and I fill a spacious glass with much white German wine (Zeller Schwarze Katz) from a bottle presented to me earlier today from a farmer friend in the rain who flies to Germany regularly on Ryanair, and I let things and desperations be the way they please; no shooting out of the anatomy tonight! There is no real hard sense in trying to categorize Dolden’s music; it’s futile, pointless - but I’m filling my quota anyway, and I can throw in words about the enjoyment of living inside this music, ’cause that’s what it’s about; not listening but living. The constellations stomp like horses in their boxes, like Tomas Tranströmer said (or something like it); “thoughts gather in scattered herds through the shadows, the night sky is cold and star sharp; Death laughs inwardly across the wooded horizon…” Physics of Seduction. Invocation #2 (1991) for harpsichord and tape; Vivienne Spiteri [harpsichord]. Dolden: “Speed creates pure objects. It is itself a pure object, since it cancels out the ground and territorial reference points, since it runs ahead of time to annual time itself, since it moves more quickly than its own cause and obliterates that cause by outstripping it. Speed is the triumph of effect over cause, the triumph of instantaneity over time and depth, the triumph of the surface and pure objectality over the profundity of desire. Speed creates a space of initiation which may be lethal; its only rule is to leave no trace behind. Triumph of forgetting over memory, an uncultivated amnesic intoxication". It gets worse, worse… It gets worse… as jittering atoms gather for a mingling vernissage evening at the horizon of events, right around that black hole in the midst of all our lives, or in a laid-back agony at the Restaurant at The End of the Universe (I bow to Mr. Adams who gave some meaning to my meaninglessness). Dolden produces full-blown, full-fledged assumptions of the totality of life and universe, and batters the humpty-dumpty, forlorn jesters of doubt, in a massive grandeur of psychic wonders, out of which a stellar harpsichord rises, glowing like sought-for venom though our arteries… I think of Elisabeth Chojnacka and I think about Jukka Tiensuu - and I leave it to you to figure that one out! Ah, Mr. Dolden! We tremble at these auditory messages from the core of emotional might, from the center of intellectual attention, from the venomous pit of the essence of pain of this existence… Beyond the Walls of Jericho (1991 - 1992). Dolden: “The acceleration of our culture in terms of images and ideas creates a point at which everything seems to be happening at once and the maintenance of a linear historical perspective, with its revolutionary eruptions, is no longer meaningful. This simultaneity is musically alluded to several times in the composition by the use of several hundred solos occurring at once. Each solo has its own narrative and history but when all of them are combined together such narrative structures dissolve into one large sound field, often without clear beginning or ending. This breakdown of a linear time perspective and the resulting loss of our musical and social subjectivity create a feeling of absence and a perception of stasis. It is at that moment of æsthetic perception in which our day-to-day realities dissolve and there is a suspension of linear time that the possibility of new thought or feeling, revolutionary or otherwise, can begin.” Again, as in the preceding re-issue, there is no mercy at all. Dolden starts full speed. A little while later some transparency is administered as the tour-de-force of the beginning suddenly halts, allowing for sounds to be deciphered in gluey, jingling jangling elasticity, peculiarly merging with some of my memories of François Bayle issues of earlier years, visions of an old horse carriage creaking and squeaking through… Hungary, maybe. The sound torrent returns, though, albeit in slower motion and bigger halls, gesturing around the spacious indoors of men with power, eventually falling back into the focused concentration of a hole in the ground in Tikrit… Other instances of this piece are almost comical, which I believe also is the intent of Dolden, in semi-jazzy grimaces, stepping up the tempo in limping rhythms and pearly, watery guitarisms - and I like these parts that pull in different directions, moving a bit out of phase, causing tremendous torque to manifest, threatening to crack the whole situation into bits and pieces of opposing forces, yet flowing out of the loudspeakers on the same strand of auditory law. In a Bed Where the Moon Was Sweating. Resonance #1 (1993) for clarinet & tape; François Houle [clarinet]. Dolden: “Part of the Resonance Cycle plays with the notion of intimacy in music. In this case the soloist is often surrounded with his own sound, creating a dissolving of the singular with the “other”, which is in fact the performer reflected back in a narcissistic fashion. Beyond these elements, the Resonance Cycle also uses voice, which is perhaps the most intimate and seductive sound of all because it represents the body covered with appearances, illusions, traps, animal parodies and sacrificial simulations.” Slowly, carefully, softly emerging, very different from the other piece before it, unraveling a smooth, romantic painting motion in the clarinet, distant and closer and close! However, density grows thicker, as a hail of sounds pulls up like a battalion of jeeps with their headlights all on, blinding, encircling, the smelling fumes from the exhaust rising like smoke in the darkness beyond. In this center of attention a space is protected by some invisible power, making a solo dance possible and necessary, and someone plays, dances, around and around, stomping feet in the soil, in the holy hour of cow dust. The clarinet cuts like smooth swords through the fragrance of night. Stockhausenesque voices hammer their morphemes like a palisade around the music, the jeeps still shining their headlights into the middle of the circle. Whispers - also Stockhausenesque - invoke the secrets of the night to perform their unknowns, and the rite probably reaches some kind of completion as the clarinet and the voices and the extraneous sounds merge in a controlled wilderness of sonic attributes. Physics of Seduction. Invocation #1 (1991) for electric guitar & tape; Paul Dolden [electric guitar]. Dolden: “All great systems of production and interpretation, including musical discourses, increasingly appear as a large futile body. A universe that can no longer be interpreted in the terms of psychological relations, or in structures of oppositions, must be interpreted in the terms of play, challenges, duels, and the strategy of appearances - that is in terms of seduction. Moreover, seduction threatens all orthodoxies with their collapse as it is a black magic for the deviation of all truths.” Relaxed hands seem to be waving through these laid-back suburban communities, but just for a while, because the midday rescue vehicles soon dash through layer after layer of red-hot guitarisms, cauterizing by-standers and storeowners down the block. A stew is brewing somewheres, bubbling with venom; guitars and screeching unidentifiables. Yes, it is hard as ever to put futile words to Dolden’s messages. They’re tough enough to hear, let alone talk about in an intelligible way. Take it for what its worth - and that goes for the music too. At times I think it’s just boring in all its frenzy, and I close down Mr. Dolden and bring on some Bach Cello Suites or let Mr. Dylan persuade me that It’s Not Dark Yet - but revisiting Dolden brings home some more discoveries from inside the maddening masses, and there are several ways to approach the Dolden madness, even though I suggest small portions of him for afternoon courtesy, you see. He is a bit too much, most of the time… without getting too much done, so to say. He’s sort of shaking doors and smashing windows, but he seldom administers poems. Veils - Studies in Textural Transformations (1984 - 1985). Dolden: “Veils […] is a series of textures or walls of sound, which act as an invitation for the listener to explore an environment where new acoustic sensations and associations can be discovered. The texture, a sustained chord of usually 14 - 56 notes, is constantly transforming by changing the instrument type that is articulating the sound (i.e. from strings to voice to brass to piano to marimba to glass etc.) No electronic effects were used and only straight recordings and mixing of acoustic instruments were used. However, the sound source or instrument type at any moment is not usually obvious to the listener, hence the sound sources are veiled. This veiled sound is created by three main factors: the extensive multitracking (from 180 to 280 tracks of the same instrument are used at any moment), the tuning of the chords (microtonal intervals which do not occur in our normal 12-tone equally tempered tuning system), and the recording method of close miking in a dead acoustical space which brings out aspects of each instrument type that we normally do not hear.” This, though, is poetry; spider web poetry, thin smoke poetry, resounding silence poetry through trembling minds. The resounding of the first part of Veils is a majestic gesture into infinity, very unlike the window smashing and door-shaking that I have complained about. I float through these layers of semi-transparency in a spirit-in-flight sensation, a bit like what I felt in the movie 2010, or in some cinematic expressions of Tarkovsky. This notion is only strengthened and reinforced by the second and third part of Veils - mysterious monoliths afloat in the space-time continuum, in chords that reach for infinity in wonderful gasps for space… mythical objects slowly turning around themselves in the timeless flow of mind, of Rigpa, the state out of which all rise; all phenomena of this unexplained existence of our and everything else… Below the Walls of Jericho (1988 - 1989). Dolden:“The title is only a loose reference to the story in the Bible. What interests me about the story is the idea of a large mass of people knocking down a wall through the use of sound. The story gives credence to the notion of music as a catalyst for social change. Beyond the sheer physical impact that a large number of sounds contain, music is a form of language, which is capable of stimulating thought. The power of music lies in the simultaneous physical and intellectual seduction of the listener.” A quite wonderful, glassy sound, organ-like, subdued-fanfare-like, opens Below the Walls of Jericho. This shiny, honey-dew fluidity develops into standing walls of dense, gray sound - with glittering, glimmering sensations built into to them, dark percussive elements - like falling rocks down a wintry Lapland slope - growing in terrible intensity… until a tiny screw of a sound suddenly lets loose some silence which, however, slips away like the tail of a lizard, leaving us in a magnificence of over-toned, interstellar cruelty, in a realm where all is shine, cold, bright shine… and again - as before, sometimes, with Dolden - I get these icy notions of alien horizons on worlds we know nothing about, and the unknown gathers incredible strength in a pumping, pulsating wheezing of giant properties of alienation; scary headphone adventures! Surely, this didn’t come across this brightly and ingeniously on the earlier release. I heard it the first time when it appeared on the Cultures Électroniques release from the GMEB competitions in 1990, where it won the composer the first prize for electroacoustic composition. Dolden’s reallocated attention has brought this piece into new luster, new shine. It’s quite amazing, really. There are many layers of sound relieving each other or adding to each other, and the sheer roughness and simultaneous clarity of some of them bring on levels of corrugated auditory surfaces I have never heard or touched before, bringing me into joyous discovery for the first time in a long listening while, as Dolden actually manages to mix my perceptive senses in hitherto unknown ways, mysteriously; tactility and hearing, vision (bright!) and smell (acrid!). This is a hit! The rhythmic properties have me gasping for air in a similar way, so strong, manifold, un-ending, loopless, ever into an elusive distance, yet firm on your tympanic membranes and on your skin, your heart beating behind the sound, below your breath, inside a dream… Gravity’s Stillness. Resonance #6 (1996) for violin or viola & tape; Julie-Anne Derome [violin]. Dolden:“The work is based on fairly simple melodic and harmonic ideas. The interest for me in this type of work is to use the recording studio to create a series of distinct sound worlds, or orchestrations, based on these melodic and harmonic ideas. The tape becomes the catalyst for creating the changes in mode and tone. The live soloist repeatedly states the melodic ideas in a simple to very virtuosic manner.” A dark motion rising cautiously out of semi-instrumenty realms, emerging into clarity and tactile reality, spreading its auditory fragrance like opening petals… and you feel yourself soaring down inside the space inside these petals, as if docking with a giant space ship - and yet it feels so familiar behind that veil of uncertainty and semi-transparent reality, the violins, the orchestral familiarity, hundreds of years of tradition carried towards you on outspread fingertips, like a gift from undisclosed benefactors… There are some incredibly close encounters herein, with the strings, which you practically ride, trembling madly with them… only to find yourself suddenly distanced into the room, the strings grouping themselves neatly into an ensemble up on a little stage… and then you’re down into the instruments again, the strings of the violin fully charged high-voltage transmission lines through your vicinity; danger! Dolden mixes these two aspects seamlessly, this closing in and distancing, this old tradition ensemble familiarity and this latter day electronic havoc! Splendid! And Julie-Anne Derome makes a thrilling contribution! Caught in an Octagon of Unaccustomed Light (1987 - 1988). Dolden:“The composition continues the composer’s development of a musical language based on the color of unusual or unaccustomed acoustic sounds. In this case, the predominant use of inharmonic timbres (metal, multiphonics and a non-octave tuning system) creates the language that for the most part our musical tradition has ignored. A series of five sections, each of which is based on specific sound sources, has the listener caught by their interactions. Musical continuity is maintained by the reuse of similar gestures, colors and tuning system. Overall structural integrity is achieved through a palindromic ordering of the sections. For example, the first and fifth sections use the same sound world, and likewise the second and fourth sections use another sound world. The third or middle section contains aspects on both sound groups.” It’s hammer time right off, as you veer here and veer there… eventually catching hold of some materializing matter in the shape of sturdy tools inside a machine-scape of some industrial environment, as the industrial sounds re-group into Christmas time Santa workshops of speedily constructed toys and half-perverted goblins by endless conveyor belts… and it’s a Disney culture gone seriously wrong. After a while a peculiar, metallic percussion, irregular, brings on reminiscences of Harry Partch and John Cage, and I feel right at home in my intellectual, academic predispositions… but it wouldn’t be like Dolden not to amass things, though between these moments of catharsis he lets little details build strange, twiggy, thorny environments to scratch yourself bloody on if you don’t watch it! The slow, spacious anonymities that Dolden sometimes allows for in this piece, almost inwardly thoughtful in a roomy, thin gamelan, result in generously emitted beauty of sound that I bathe my perception in, like when nocturnal flakes of snow fall through the circle of light of a street lamp, when the town is sleeping silently; these cold crystals melting on your cheek. The Vertigo of Ritualized Frenzy. Resonance #4 (1996) for reed instrument and/or piano (or accordion) & tape; François Houle [clarinet]; Leslie Wyber [piano]. Dolden:“Much of my work begins by using the tape medium to create musical situations and dialogues that would not be possible with a fixed live ensemble. In this case the live duo is confronted with jazz, rock or chamber music created by various string, metal or wind orchestras. At times the live parts seem independent of the tape and at other times the two elements dissolve into each other. These different allusions to musical reality are based on a very simple melody which keeps coming back in an almost irritating manner.” The inconspicuous beginning mix of roughness and timbral modality builds up strong levels of conviction, so watch your output levels. A playful melody, sort of heard from way inside a hall, or from behind a corner in a restaurant, reveals where the musicians are poking about in there scores, kind of nervously and absentmindedly, a half hour before they have to start playing for real, for pay. There is a distance in the way Dolden has smeared the sounds across a wall quite far away, across the dancing floor. The music itself is semi-jazzy, semi-cocktail-party-licked, easy going, swirling about in short, close motions, never traveling too far off from the instruments that produce the sounds observed. In the Natural Doorway I Crouch (1986 - 1987). Dolden:“In the Natural Doorway I Crouch is inspired by the interaction of the two distinct sound worlds: plucked metal strings and wind instruments. The composition is divided into three sections of 3, 5 and 7 minutes, each of which explores the relationship between the sound worlds as they are constantly changing. This movement in sound is evoked by the title, which suggests the transformations from one state to another, as in a doorway that acts as a passageway between areas of sound. In most cases, the crouching is only momentary as we spring from one area to another. The tuning of the composition involves a system of just intonation, developed by the composer, in which the harmonics of the fundamental(s) are systematically changing register in relation to each other.” This piece was one of the first Dolden works I heard, on Cultures Électroniques Volume 3, presenting the winners from the Bourges competitions of 1988. It’s probably one of his most spread works too. I’ve come across it here and there. To begin with it has a spooky conversational quality, the likeness of voices soaring about inside instrumental and/or electronic sounds, as if matter was raising its jittery subatomic voice to the level of human hearing, just to scare us real good at last… The flakes of sound are heavy in the void, tumbling about like forlorn celestial debris, traveling like that forever, or maybe one day crashing down on unsuspecting civilizations on blue spheres in revolving spiral galaxies, cutting everything very short… Morse-like percussive codes are emitted from inside the body of sound; trembling, shivering cries of beings lost behind malevolent horizons, divide from us by impossible gaps in time and space and simultaneity… There is an ominous, fateful feel to this work, as if it was describing events so vast and so immensely forceful that acceptance is the sole possible attitude from our point of view. This music seems to deal with the inevitability of the sun eventually turning into a red giant, or events like that, or perhaps with the natural loneliness of the soul - and one feels, as a reaction to Dolden’s music, an urge to escape existence in matter to existence in spirit, which is all there really is to hope for; and wouldn’t it be nice to cut this endless hunt for sub-atomic particles short, realizing with the string theorists that all is vibrations of different frequencies, also confirming the conviction of Stockhausen and others of a celestial music; the universe understood as an endless composition…
haut
Critiquepar Éric Normand in JazzoSphère (France), 1 novembre 2003 |668_3|
«… à découvrir d’urgence.»
empreintes DIGITALes, étiquette montréalaise spécialisée dans les musiques électroniques et électroacoustiques entreprend cet automne des fouilles dans l’œuvre surprenante du compositeur canadien Paul Dolden. Voilà d’un coup ces trois cds d’œuvres datant de 1984 à 1996, «entièrement retraitées, remixées et remasterisées par le compositeur en 2001-2002». La musique de Dolden est caractérisée par l’utilisation de centaines d’enregistrements instrumentaux et vocaux combinés en couches multiples. En matière de musique acousmatique, son œuvre est singulière puisque l’utilisation de sources instrumentales s’adjoint à un sens aigu de l’orchestration et place la musique aux antipodes des «musiques de bruits» que suggère souvent l’acousmatique. On pourrait peut-être parler d’une approche symphonico-numérique où Stravinsky et Xenakis reviennent en écho, machinés dans une hybridation maximale des styles. Les œuvres mixtes du compositeur (avec François Houle à la clarinette et Peggy Lee au violoncelle, entre autres) font particulièrement preuve de sa sensibilité musicale et nous entraînent dans des moments d’intensité incroyables. Ce petit survol de l’œuvre de Dolden démontre admirablement la singularité de son langage (et son importance) qui, tout en s’approchant d’un discours symphonique radicalisé, ouvre la porte aux influences du jazz, du rock et des diverses possibilités venues de l’électrification et de la capture du son. Une œuvre à découvrir d’urgence.
haut
Critiquepar Réjean Beaucage in La Scena Musicale #9:2 (Québec), 1 octobre 2003 |648_3|
«Toujours aussi impressionnant.»
empreintes DIGITALes fait paraître ces jours-ci trois disques de Paul Dolden. Il s’agit de L’ivresse de la vitesse, paru à l’origine en doublé et dont les disques sont séparés pour cette nouvelle édition «retraitée, remixée et remasterisée». Le troisième, Seuil de silences, réédite des pièces parues en 1990 sur le disque «The Threshold of Deafening Silence» et présente deux nouvelles pièces mixtes (avec Julie-Anne Derome au violon pour Resonance #6, de 1996, et François Houle à la clarinette et Leslie Wyber au piano sur Resonance #4, aussi de 1996). Si on est ici au seuil du silence, on n’y entre pourtant pas souvent. Dolden travaille l’épaisseur du son comme un sculpteur et n’hésite pas à placer les unes par dessus les autres des centaines de pistes, ce qui donne une perspectives sonore impressionnante. Les œuvres «anciennes» (la plus vieille date de 1986) ont certes bénéficié des possibilités de remixage offertes par les perfectionnements technologiques les plus récents et la lourde pâte sonore qu’affectionne le compositeur y gagne en netteté. Toujours aussi impressionnant. 4/6
haut
100 Records That Set the World On Fire, While No One Was Listeningpar Betty Davis in The Wire #175 (RU), 1 septembre 1998 |280_4|
«[one of the] 100 Records that set the world on fire»
Canadian electroacoustic composer Dolden champions a ‘theory of excess,’ a belief that the intoxication and seduction of information overload is a desirable condition, one that frees us to perceive the world afresh. L’ivresse de la vitesse compiles nine devastating sonic manifestos to make his point. Several hundred painstakingly scored and multitracked solo acoustic instruments collide to produce a super-dense musical black hole that even Iannis Xenakis would have shied away from. Trying to actually follow the impossible complexity drags you across the event horizon into a world where consciousness survives but meaning has been obliterated. Futile relief comes on a few tracks where virtuoso soloists battle in vain against the taped chaos Nirvana or nihilism? No matter, you can listen to it a thousand times without wanting it to make sense.
haut
Reviewpar Hal London in Array Online #17:2 (ÉU), 1 juin 1997 |242|
«His performance […] gives further evidence of his mastery of the sonic resources at
his disposal.»
There is so much musical output contained on these two discs that it took me several listenings to come to grips with it all. In the liner notes, Dolden describes his current artistic intentions as involving the “speeding up of an excess of musical ideas so that the composition and its materials exhaust themselves in the shortest time possible”. Most of the works here reflect this principle in different ways. Another perceptual factor in listening to these pieces is the manner in which Dolden intersperses pieces for tape alone with works featuring solo performers backed with material from the solo tape compositions. This approach has the twofold effect of emphasizing hitherto unstressed aspects of the tape pieces and also of blurring to some extent the distinctions between the individual works. These considerations aside, Dolden constantly varies his approach, not hewing to a quick-cut, sound-mass approach to the exclusion of linear development. Dolden first composes simultaneous lines of music on manuscript paper, then digitally records each line as performed by an acoustic instrument. The parts are then digitally mixed with little or no signal processing. His exclusive use of acoustic instruments is justified by his opinion that electronic synthesis techniques are unable to produce a large palette of convincingly different timbres. A huge palette of acoustic sounds are used tor these pieces, including nearly every orchestral instrument, voices, ethnic and folk instruments, and percussion. And although he does not use signal processing, he occasionally achieves DSP-like effects through ingenious mixing of his sound sources. The mixing often involves overlays of 40 or more tracks, and the massed effects and climaxes achieved are impressive. His use of digital editing is equally responsible for the results, as the pace and mood of the pieces are largely controlled this way. The title cut and the last work in this collection, both for tape alone, could not be more contrasting. L’ivresse de la vitesse (1992-93), encapsulating as it does the composer’s more recent methods, is an exhilarating outburst of contrasting ideas and styles at a rapid-fire pace. Veils (1984-85) is a halfhour, 3 movement composition which explores a sonic world of subtly shifting timbres, comprising drones on acoustic but ambiguous-sounding origin. After the adjustment is made to the leisurely pace of this piece, it is thoroughly satisfying. With the exception of these two pieces, I gravitated toward the pieces that featured solo instruments because of the focus they provide. This may be because Dolden does not emphasize spatial placement in these wtirks. Often, the sound struck me as completely up-front and two dimensional. No doubt this is partly because he eschews most signal processing,but the overall sound of the acoustic instruments tends to be a little washed-out. Experimenting with different microphones and preamplification should help — quality of engineering is important when this approach is taken, especially when there is extensive mixing and overlaying. The solo instruments help to impart more of a spatial quality. Revenge of the repressed, Resonance #2 teatures a performance by cellist Peggy Lee which ranges from fleet passagework to elegiac phrases and extended techniques. The harpsichord part in Physics of seduction, Invocation #2 takes on a thunderous and threatening aspect in the hands of Vivienne Spiteri, thanks to Dolden’s multitracking and close-miking techniques. Two pieces feature saxophonist/clarinetist Francois Houle. One of these, In a bed where the moon was sweating, Resonance #1, strikes a perfect balance between the virtuostic solo clarinet part (often multitracked with amazing etfect) and the tape part with its echoes (or “resonances”) of preceding events. Physics of seduction, Invocation #1 features the composer on electric guitar in a technically adept performance which also makes use of the processed timbres which are the domain of the instrument. Dolden shows a flair for these changes of tone. His performance on guitar here gives further evidence of his mastery of the sonic resources at his disposal. Hal London is a freelance, part-time composer who divides his time equally between acoustic and electroacoustic music. Dolden’s approach in this respect is of special interest to him.
haut
Interviewpar Thomas McLennan in Musicworks #64 (Canada), 1 mai 1996 |6049|
«With his emphasis on a maximalist æsthetic, he walks a compositional tightrope…»
Paul Dolden has been touted by many critics as one of the most original and innovative musical voices to take us into the next millenium: a fin de siècle artist. With his emphasis on a maximalist æsthetic, he walks a compositional tightrope by combining traditional western music practices with electroacoustic techniques, non-orchestral instruments, and the energy and drive of popular culture. Dolden has kept in sight the fact that one can be simultaneously entertained and challenged by the conceptualization of a reality never dreamt of before. One is seduced on many levels: by the virtuosic manipulation of musical language; the myriad gestures, colours, and contrasts; the speed; and the vigorous forcefulness of expression. One can be held in a state of rapture in the presence of music of such unreal beauty, but this sphere of existence continues long after the music stops. The voluptuous sound world of Paul Dolden always leaves one motivated to contemplate oneself and the world in novel and fantastical ways. Since 1981 Dolden has won eighteen national and international awards for composition. These include three first prizes and a Euphonies d’or at the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition in France, and, most recently, Canada’s Jean A. Chalmers Award for his composition L’ivresse de la vitesse. His works have appeared on numerous recordings includinq two solo CDs. Thomas McLennan: What in your mind creates a good performance of a piece for live instruments and tape? Paul Dolden: First, you must have a good sound system and everyone must know their musical parts extremely well. Beyond this, a richer musical experience happens when the performers know the tape part extremely well and therefore can play in a manner which seems as if they anticipate or lead the tape’s gestures, colours, rhythms, etc. If the live parts are played with this type of savvy, then the difference between the live part and tape seem to disappear and the two components seem to be working together on the same musical goal or idea. I should say that this illusion is possible only when the writing of the live and tape parts relate to each other timbrally, rhythmically, harmonically, and melodically. What is musically boring is if the performers sound like they are just following the tape, or are “slaved” to the tape. Could you comment on your reuse of materials in the current works of the Resonance cycle for live performer and tape. The mother piece for the Resonance cycle is the tape piece L’ivresse de la vitesse. All of the works for live instruments and tape in the Resonance cycle at particular moments allude to, or “resonate,” to the mother piece. This self-quotation is intentional and is an attempt to deal with the balancing of old and new information in the musical discourse. Moreover, it becomes a type of musical play or game of recognition, semi-recognition, and non-recognition. This game plays with musical memory which is the basis of musical structure. In the same way, the Walls cycle uses the Walls of Jericho tape pieces as a basis or “resonator” for the soloist and tape cycle entitled the Physics of Seduction. Invocation #3. Therefore, I am usinq the word “cycle” in its historical sense as each of the cycles could be played in their entirety and produce an evening-length work. Reflect on musical performance as you perceive its importance to musical language and composition. It is hard for me to imagine not having the experience of being a performer and trying to be a composer. Instrumental and vocal performance is the living history of musical thought and gesture, and to really understand instrumental writing a background in performance is necessary. Also, during a performance, whether it is for six friends in the front room or more than 800 at a professional concert, there is an excitement, an adrenalin rush, and a certain type of concentration that one can understand as a performer. To write utilizing that energy and style of thought will always lead to more interesting music. In the last two years, performance, for me, has taken two directions. I no longer play other people’s music. I have learned two of my own compositions, one for guitar and tape, and one for violin and tape. This process has informed me of what it’s like to play one of my scores, and what it’s like to be a soloist with a tape accompaniment. The other type of performance I am doing is free improvising on guitar, violin, and cello. For me this is primarily an exploration of sound and gesture that I keep more private because I do not find it musically profound. It is a process to go through in which i enjoy the discovery of combining notes, sounds, and colours wliich sometimes feeds back into my compositional practice. How do you retain a balance between the individual character of instruments and orchestration with so many tracks? (For example your work with 400 tracks or musical parts occurring simultaneously.) First of all understanding orchestration, and secondly, engineering. In terms of orchestration, it is important to understand how each instrument sounds in each register, and what happens when different instruments are combined. This goes beyond a textbook knowledge and requires a good aural memory because there are endless permutations. Important aspects of this are knowing which instruments mask which sounds, and which ones fuse with others at particular dynamics and/or ranges. After one has created a score of notation, this must be translated to a recorded signal which is well produced. For my music, the most important aspects of engineering are: microphone placement during the recording of instruments; submixing (because I do not have a 400 track board to control levels between different members of the orchestra); and panning and equalization. Panning is not used much because each track is a beautifui stereo image using a particular technique of stereo microphone imaging. What is more important is which instrument receives what type of EQ curve to achieve a particular musical sound. As far as maintaining the individuality of instruments, my work in the ‘80s was primarily concerned with the concept of the fused sound, therefore there was a decreased emphasis on being able to hear a particular line or instrumental colour. Over the last few years I have become more interested in hearing individual lines or groups of lines in the multiplicity of 400 parts. Could you comment on your present exploration of twelve-tone equal temperament? And, do you see this continuing? Tuning has been very important in my work. In the ‘80s I was only writing in microtonal systems, many of which I designed myself. I used just intonation and particular microtonal systems which often meant there would be anywhere from thirty to sixty notes per octave, which led to the fused sound of those works. I do find a certain clarity in twelve-tone equal temperament, and in some ways it almost seems sparse after ten years of microtonal work. The main reason for the return to equal temperament is that all microtonal systems, I discovered, led to a certain type of stasis. It seems that I have, at this level, reinvented the wheel, because equal temperament was designed to facilitate faster moving harmonic rhythm. My music has gradually become more concerned with harmonic rhythm, so that moving to equal temperament has been quite a natural progression. I find the return to equal temperament makes writing much easier because everything is instantly transposable and invertible. The problem with many microtonal systems is that when a harmony is inverted or transposed many notes have to be slightly adjusted. So I am able to write much faster now. One of the reasons I left twelve-tone equal temperament originally is because all of the intervals are mistuned except the octave, and you hear this particularly with the more consonant intervals. However, I am primarily writing fast music these years, so you do not really hear the mistunings, because at higher speeds the ear does not have enough time to register this aspect of equal temperament. I am slowly starting to think about how to integrate my current writing with all of the experience I gained in microtonal music. I am trying to envision a type of music that has a very fast moving harmonic rhythm, but also moves through different types of microtonal ideas, and comes back to equal temperament and keeps moving to avoid that whole static aspect of microtonal systems. You have stated a belief in the revolutionary potential of music lyinq in the transcendental aesthetic experience or moment. Can this moment live on in the listener/society and develop into something beyond itself?I believe that one of the important aspects of successful aesthetic perception is the search for the ecstatic moment: that moment of the loss of self which we also experience during extended drug usage and during sex. In these moments there is a loss of memory of who you are, what you stand for, what/where you are, etc. What is fascinating about these moments is that they allow for new ideas, visions, feelings, and thoughts to emerge. Now, the aesthetic/artistic experience is unique among these three experiences in that it is a completely safe environment, you can never physically harm yourself. I would like to think this ecstatic aesthetic experience is always goinq on in every culture. Certainly in western culture/society it has a different emphasis in different art forms, and areas of human endeavour, at different times. At present we definitely live in a film culture as people say to me they go to the film to “lose themselves.” For art music right now, most people do not search out these moments. In fact, the most common response we receive is that we tend to confuse people rather than allow for transcendental ecstatic experiences. But this is a larger social problem because the musical languages we are using are currently unrepresented in the media, which is where most people find out about works of music. Which composers are your major influences now? Composers who always inspire me, and will probably always inspire me to write, are Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, Mahler, Stravinsky, Bartok, Ligeti, and Berio; and Lutoslawski and Xenakis to some extent. After this I have musical flings with different composers at different times that last anywhere from a few months to a few years. Right now I am very fascinated with Brahms, and with contemporary composers Magnus Lindberg, Robert Saxton, and Alfred Schnittke. How often do you visit historical structures in your music? What are the forms you create yourself? When you listen/write/perform music all of the time, inevitably you absorb without thinking the historical structures. For instance, we all speak in sentences and paragraphs, which immediately creates a structure in our verbal discourses. Obviously not all structures are equally fascinating or equally great. I think most historical musical structures operate implicitly in my music and I may not even be aware of them. I am, like most composers, more aware of structures that I think are more original, or at least those I had to spend a certain amount of time consciously thinking about. Recently, I started writing pieces not knowing ahead of time where I am going, whereas before I would compose the structure first. Currently, I consider how much new information do I keep introducing, and how much information previously in the piece will be repeated or reiterated with variations. It is that tension between old and new material, and working it out, that becomes the structural tension I am conscious of when writing. For the listeners, structure is somethinq to hang their hats on, so I am always aware of the tension between when they are beinq completely confused and when they are kept at the edge of their seats in anticipation. Explain the extensive relationships that exist in your cornpositional language between melody and harmony, and notes and timbre. Also, how do you accomplish syntax in the field of electroacoustics, where the focus traditionally has been on sound collections? Good music is always about numerous things - notes, counterpoint, melody, harmony, colour, and structure. Electroacoustic theory over the last few years has created a paradigm for discussing music in which syntax, or the language of music, is contrasted with morphology, which is the actual sound type, including anything from the sound of footsteps, to oboes, to the final textural quality of the sound. Traditional electroacoustic theorists have argued that what makes electroacoustic music special is its focus on morphology, while instrumental music is mainly concerned with syntax. I do not find this distinction new or revealing. I am convinced that good composers throughout history have always been aware of the colouristic possibilities of music making, but perhaps did not have all of the terminology for it that is currently at our disposal. I would suggest that we could select very syntactically based composers such as JS Bach and Brian Ferneyhough, and one could listen (as I often do) to these composers morphologically. That is, listen to their music in terms of changing orchestration, colours, and density. Likewise, one can listen to what is considered morphologically based music - for instance, Francis Dhomont or Edgar Varèse - in terms of note movement and organization. To place myself on this continuum: I have always been interested in a maximalist aesthetic, in creating music that somehow combines everything. In some ways I am always conscious of both syntax and morphology when composing. For me, a fundamental link between syntax and morphology is harmony. If one listens to a great piece of music in a musical way, then one listens both syntactically and morphologically as the two work together; in other words, one listens harmonically. Let me expand. The question asks about the relationship between the melody and harmony. I have always loved harmony, and often when composing I define the harmony and then create the lines for each instrument from that. You do not need a PhD in contemporary music theory to know that harmonies and chords lead to a morphological way of listening. Specifically, chords lead to fused chords, which lead to fused timbres or fused textures. By working with notes and building harmonies of thirty to fifty note chords with their horizontal/melodic implications, I am in fact defining the morphology. In short, the 400 tracks have a predefined morphological sound, which is the sound of the harmony being articulated by all the lines. Seventy to eighty percent of my 400 tracks in any given piece are traditional western orchestral instruments, the remainder being gamelan, hand percussion, drum kits, electric guitar, and voice (but we are used to choral and orchestral mixtures). So I would say that at one level, morphologically speaking, there is nothing new about my music, it is just extended orchestration. In other words, morphological transformations are a minor compositional strategy in my music. Ultimately the perceived motion is created through syntax: large scale variety, contrast, harmonic direction, different types of counterpoint, and instrumental gestures and articulations.
haut
Chalmers Award Recipientspar Robert Crew in The Toronto Star (Canada), 16 mai 1995 |189_5|
«A leading figure in Canada’s electroacoustic community… is central to the
growth and success of electroacoustic music in Canada.»
Paul Dolden, winner of the composers’ award for L’ivresse de la vitesse, his 15-minute piece for [recorded] orchestra, Eastern instruments, choir and found sound objects, was praised by the jury for producing “an image of music for the next millennium.” A leading figure in Canada’s electroacoustic community, Dolden has had the same piece praised in London and Prague, where it won first prize in the Musica Nova ’94 International Competition. Jean-François Denis, winner of the presenters’ award, “is central to the growth and success of electroacoustic music in Canada.” He programmed an annual concert series featuring original works and Canadian premieres as a professor of electroacoustic music at Concordia University in Montréal from 1985 to 1989 and is one of the founders of the organization Canadian Electroacoustic Community. Denis’ magazines Contact! and Flash! and recording activities have had a widespread influence.
haut
Soundcheck Reviewpar Phil England in The Wire #135 (RU), 1 mai 1995 |189|
«Do not miss the work of this important “fin de siècle” artist.»
Most people use the recording medium for purely documentary purposes; Paul Dolden’s project is to highlight the way the recording studio can create ‘impossible’ effects and musical events. This CD finds him multitracking up to 400 tracks of expanded orchestral instrumentation to create a kaleidoscopic music of dazzling complexity. Dolden’s stunning debut CD worked with the transmuting effect of speed — not speed as an end in itself, but as a gateway into another sonic and textural reality. L’ivresse de la vitesse, by contrast, sounds more conventionally orchestral. Wagnerian vocal passages give way to humour, fragmenration and objection. Aaron Copland and morning-in-America passages move into hyperspeed and cascade into huge, finely detailed washes of sound. Like Conlon Nancarrow or the New Complexity school, Dolden sets different tempos and time signatures against each other. Such a vast amount of musical information demands a new way of listening, the imposition of patterns on apparent chaos. Spiritually, Dolden seems to have plumped for being a postmodern rootless soul fascinated with surface. “Seduction threatens all orthodoxies with their collapse as it is a blacK magic for the deviation of all truths” he writes in the sleeve notes. He seems able to incite controversy witn ease. Since his appearance at last year’s LMC festival, idle talk has centered on his “objectionable” personality; one composer has even called for Dolden’s music to be banned for its alleged misogyny. This double CD (selling for the price of a single) also contains a number of works for instrumentalist and tape. Dolden magnifies tne tiny sounds made by the instruments and then uses them to surround the soloist along with his usual orchestral apocalypse. Francois Houle (soprano saxophone, clarinet) and Peggy Lee (cello) both worked on developing the parts and put in excellent performances here. Veils, the final 30 minute track, takes a different tack completely with dense, lush, sustained chords — possibly the final word on drone music, with a closing passage which will make your windows death-rattle. Dolden’s music is like viewing a landscape from a helicopter, or at Koyaanisqatsi hyper-motion: a postmodern lens through which to view complexity. Do not miss the work of this important “fin de siècle” artist.
haut
Reviewpar Brian Duguid in Electric Shock Treatment (EST) #6 (RU), 1 mars 1995 |185_5|
«… few other modern composers who can be so effortlessly assured of a place in
history.»
The title of Paul Dolden’s first CD, The Threshold of Deafening Silence says a lot about the method and aims of this Canadian electroacoustic composer. As does the title of this new release (it translates as “Intoxication by Speed.” All Dolden’s pieces use mainly acoustic instruments, with in several cases several hundred separate instrumental parts painstakingly multitracked and mixed. The result is music of overpowering density, great contrast and frequently startling and fascinating texture. Several of the cornpositions are for thesed taped instruments only. Others use the impenetrable tapes as backing for solo instrumentalists. For example, Peggy Lee’s cello on Physics of Sedudion — Invocation #3 highlights extremes of romanticism and potency, throwing the tape scrum into sharp relief. Dolden’s aim is to bring the listener to a point where the complexity and intensity of the music prevents any orthodox listening response, resulting in a transcendent sensual experience. The admirable CD booklet includes plerity of provocative and thoughtful notes from the composer, but even without the points of entry that it provides, I could hardly fail to be seduced by this astounding album. For anyone who wans to hear new music that doesn’t lack in passion, that addresses the information age in an apt way, that enlists noise, complexity and beauty in its qufft for excess, this is it. There are few other composers whose music even seeks out such awe-inspiring power (Glenn Branca, possibly, although Xenakis also comes to mind), and few other modern composers who can be so effortlessly assured of a place in history. electrocd.com Paul Dolden: L’ivresse de la vitesse 2: critiques |
>> | |||||
| << | >> |
