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Radio // Environs
Environs
Undertow (2007), 12m19s [extrait]
Piste 1 de Environs
DVD-Audio: empreintes DIGITALes (2007) IMED 0788
30 décembre 2008
Par François Couture in CFLX, Délire actuel (Québec), 30 décembre 2008

Texte

«… la crème des musiques exigeantes, soit la frange avant-gardiste ou expérimentale de tous les genres musicaux…»

L’émission radiophonique Délire actuel consacrée aux musiques exigeantes (CFLX-FM, Sherbrooke, Québec) annonce aujourd’hui son palmarès des 30 disques à ne pas manquer en musique expérimentale pour 2008. Cette liste regroupe 30 titres représentant la crème des musiques exigeantes, soit la frange avant-gardiste ou expérimentale de tous les genres musicaux (musique contemporaine, jazz actuel, improvisation libre, avant-rock, électronique, etc.). «Ce que j’appelle musique exigeante recoupe les notions de musique actuelle, expérimentale, d’avant-garde, novatrice, etc., explique François Couture, coréalisateur de l’émission. Évidemment, je n’ai pas tout entendu ce qui s’est fait en 2008, loin de là! Donc, je ne prétends pas présenter LES 30 meilleurs disques de l’année, mais bien MES 30 meilleurs disques! Néanmoins, vu les quelque 550 disques soumis à mon attention cette année, j’espère que les artistes et les étiquettes de disque concernées sauront s’enorgueillir de figurer dans ce Top 30.»

[Au top 15: Jonty Harrison, Environs, empreintes DIGITALes.]

blogue@press-6514 press@6514
1 septembre 2008
Par Massimo Ricci in Touching Extremes (Italie), 1 septembre 2008

Texte

«The whole toughened by superlative skills in the assessment of timbral structure and a sense of architectural symmetry that not many names operating in this area can challenge.»

In presence of records such as Jonty Harrison’s Environs one is tempted to leave the leaf totally bare, with the exception of a solitary word: listen. The English composer and director of Birmingham’s BEAST fully deserves to be put side by side with the Ferraris and the Parmegianis of the world, that’s for sure. Few recent acousmatic releases have succeeded in keeping my interest levels persistently high, a program length of circa 76 minutes notwithstanding. Yet it’s right there, on the long distance, that we’re in the condition of sizing up the diverse abilities of those who play in the electroacoustic ground. While most of them need to methodically slice, glue, juxtapose and reinvent their sonic clothes only to sound more or less musty at the end, Harrison focalizes his awareness on the purest elements of life, both from a biotic point of view and the perspective of personal experience. He constructs amazing pieces entirely based on aquatic constituents which, contrarily to many bathed-in-obviousness mélanges, appear psychologically overwhelming to the extent of making us literally feel like drowning (Undertow). Otherwise, he stitches together car engines and other means of transportation to engender a whole range of inner-city rhythms and patterns (Internal combustion). The last track Afterthoughts is built upon “sounds of a suburban garden in early summer”, yet it resembles an alarming sequence of snapshots of disheartening isolation, the human factor all but absent in favour of intimidating roars, sharp clangour and ominous crescendos of insurmountable metropolitan unease. The whole toughened by superlative skills in the assessment of timbral structure and a sense of architectural symmetry that not many names operating in this area can challenge.

blogue@press-6477 press@6477
12 juin 2008
Par Tobias Fischer in Tokafi (Allemagne), 12 juin 2008

Texte

«Freed from any superimposed ballast, you can sit back and simply listen, enjoy this music…»

Contemporary sound art rarely deals with our environment directly. Instead, it prefers culling source material from its chinks and corners, picking up emissions usually too quiet for the human ear to perceive. On Environs, Jonty Harrison has not decided to deny or defy this process completely. What distinguishes his approach from that of many colleagues is that it focusses on more readily accessible surface-timbres and comes integrated into an even more ambitious purpose: Using everyday sounds to build new environments.

In a way, the use of synthesizers and electronic equipment to recreate certain parameters of the world around us is a classic thought and it should be fitting, then, that Harrison can be counted among the longstanding masters of his trade. Ever since joining the Music Department of The University of Birmingham in 1980, he has been an inspirational player on the scene, working both as a conductor and composer, picking up awards on a yearly basis, but only raising his voice when the necessity to say something truly presented itself.

His tendency to think in works instead of albums has meant that his discography has remained limited to some sampler contributions and a few, carefully selected solo records. The liaison with Canadian imprint empreintes DIGITALes has slightly mended this situation, but hardly made him more prolific: Predecessor Évidence matérielle was released a full eight years back.

This, though, does not mean that Harrison is a slow worker. His most recent full-length greatly differs from comparable endeavours and from standard practise in the sense that it is a collection of pieces all (but one) written within direct temporal proximity of its release. Streams, the end of the epic ReCycle Quadrilogy, is the noteable exception here, dating back to 1999, but then again this is easily overcompensated by the fact that two tracks, opener Undertow and closer Afterthoughts, are barely a year old. Environs is therefore not a random selection of thematically compiled scores, it is an album which presents us with an up-to-date picture of the composer’s interest and methods.

In relation to the latter, it is an immediately striking fact that Harrison eschews the typically high degrees of post-processing academic sound art is often prone to. His sounds are occasionally pitched, tuned down and transposed or treated with a bit of reverb, but even more often, they are left untreated and in their natural state. He has a point: Why meticulously assemble the gravelling noises produced by his garden roller making contact with the cobble stones of the pathways, of various car engines, different water sounds, of air being sculpted by objects moving through and against it, of data streams being sucked and pulled through fiberglass cables and of lazy Sunday afternoons spent in a dilusional surburban utopia, when you’re going to change them beyond recognisability afterwards? His pieces, then, for all of their abstractions and metaphorical meaning, have a familar ring to them, facilitating access and understanding — seldomy have liner notes been as entertaining and yet unnecessary as in this case.

This technique of course places Harrison outside of most current niches and communities. His processes contain no mysteries or transfigurations, his aesthetics are not connected to intellectual philosophies and his music is of a highly descriptive nature — 21st century programmatic musique concrete, if you like. And yet, this sidelined position allows for fresh perceptions. Freed from any superimposed ballast, you can sit back and simply listen, enjoy this music as much as you would a rock or pop song. Harrison’s pieces are surprising short stories written in the naive language of sound. They can make you happy, sad, aroused, high or melancholic — depending on your point of view and the material at hand.

It is not a modest music by any means. Harrison has a penchant for striking cinematic effects and uses them strategically like a movie director would apply his palette of daunting special effects: On aforementioned Undertow, he captures his audience’s attention right away with a sensory overwhelming introduction, in which he acoustically simulates the moment when a diver collects his breath and splashes beneath the waves. On Free Fall, meanwhile, he delivers blows of shock tactics by shooting the listener miles into the sky to allow him to hear himself tumbling down through the clouds. Already on my humble stereo setup, these pieces develop a disturbing intensity so everyone capable of playing a 5.1. DVD-Audios should be in for something special.

On other occasions, the situations may be less of a Hollywood-nature, turning more towards the vageries of quotidian life, but Harrison never deals with them in an ordinary way. You can almost imagine him rolling his garden roller, loosing himself in his thoughts, as the imaginary stones grow to the size of gigantic boulders, crushed by the greedily gnashing teeth of his destructive garden tool. And on Streams, it is less a photorealistic approximation of a physical reality of water or wind he is after, but rather the aural depictation of movement.

Harrison offers his listeners a veritable real rollercoaster ride here and you can enjoy it both with your eyes opened and closed. What’s more, the emotional proximity of these noises and our immediate environment also allow for the inclusion of humour as a musical means. On Internal Combustion, horns, bycicle bells, engines and the sounds of cars speeding by are juxtaposed with such absurd radicality and at a hyperrealistic pace that I couldn’t help laughing. It’s not the most typical reaction one would expect from a piece of contemporary sound art — but not the most unwelcome either.

blogue@press-6453 press@6453
1 mai 2008
Par Jean-Claude Gevrey in Octopus #832 (France), 1 mai 2008

Texte

«Partant d’éléments naturels ou de sons très concrets, le compositeur semble en effet les réduire en particules et, loin de se contenter d’observer leurs trajectoires aléatoires dans l’espace, les réarrange à sa guise avec beaucoup de vitalité et de poésie.»

Dernière parution en date (la troisième pour le label Empreintes Digitales) des œuvres électroacoustiques de Jonty Harrison, composées entre 1999 et 2007, Undertow place d’emblée l’auditeur sur des récifs contre lesquels les vagues viennent s’écraser puis le plonge très vite sous la surface de l’eau, source sonore de prédilection du compositeur. Commence alors une immersion dans le monde du silence qui se révèle étonnamment musical et où la circulation de fluides et l’effervescence de bulles forment un jeu de micro-percussions finissant par faire oublier la nature du matériau d’origine. L’œuvre suivante, ReCycle, est un ensemble de pièces conçu comme une ode aux quatre éléments: la terre avec force éboulis rocheux et raclement de briques, le feu dans une orchestration progressive des hoquets de moteurs à combustion, l’air par une étude sur la dynamique de la propagation des sons et enfin l’eau avec une exploration aquatique multi-dimensionnelle. Concluant cet enregistrement, Afterthoughts est à envisager comme une dérive de l’esprit où la conscience cède la place au rêve et où les bruits paisibles de la nature environnante sont graduellement engloutis par le tumulte urbain, son trafic routier et son agitation industrielle. Une constante chez Harrison retient particulièrement l’attention: son approche méticuleuse consistant à considérer des phénomènes uniques et souvent assez simples puis à les ausculter de très près, à les disséquer à l’échelle moléculaire jusqu’à les dématérialiser. Partant d’éléments naturels ou de sons très concrets, le compositeur semble en effet les réduire en particules et, loin de se contenter d’observer leurs trajectoires aléatoires dans l’espace, les réarrange à sa guise avec beaucoup de vitalité et de poésie. Disque au format DVD-Audio.

blogue@press-6446 press@6446
1 mai 2008
Par Rigobert Dittmann in Bad Alchemy #58 (Allemagne), 1 mai 2008

Coupure de presse

blogue@press-6456 press@6456
7 avril 2008
Par Grisli in Le son du grisli (France), 7 avril 2008

Texte

«Au final, si les intentions et les propositions changent, reste un travail précis sur le son, bientôt fait matière, qui impressionne encore davantage au moment de s’évanouir, une fois qu’elle se sera insinuée partout.»

Compositeur reconnu et souvent récompensé de musique électroacoustique, l’Anglais Jonty Harrison assemble sur Environs trois compositions partagées entre mouvement et statisme.

Ode peu banale aux éléments, le disque renferme ainsi les restes sonores et réinventés d’une plongée aquatique (Undertow), une traînée de parasites alertes (Rock’n’Roll), et d’étranges récupérations sonores: bruits d’automobiles et leurs effets sur le paysage (Internal Combustion), atmosphère enregistrée d’un jardin de banlieue en été (Afterthoughts).

Au final, si les intentions et les propositions changent, reste un travail précis sur le son, bientôt fait matière, qui impressionne encore davantage au moment de s’évanouir, une fois qu’elle se sera insinuée partout.

blogue@press-6422 press@6422

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