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Reviewpar George Zahora in Splendid E-Zine (ÉU), 9 mars 1998 |265|
«If the whole electroacoustic thing seems a little too pointy-headed to you, this is the
disc that’ll show you how wrong you are.»
Because I don’t have any sort of music-related academic qualifications (unlike some of my Splendid peers), I was a little bit nervous about reviewing something by a founding member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. Luckily, my fears about what to do if I didn’t like Volt were mooted by the fact that it’s a wonderful, dynamic album, full of motion and energy and thought and collisions of harmony and dischord that are enjoyable even if you’re not writing a dissertation about them. Concerto pour piano MIDI mechanizes the classical concerto format, and features a human soloist attempting to keep pace with an electronic ‘performer’ not limited by human constraints like physical speed, finger length, and so on. Le soleil et l’acier (Sun and Steel) combines Asian gamelan-type sounds with undulant keyboards, intermittent electronic percussion and an otherworldly soprano — even at its most random, it’s a thoroughly engrossing piece. Out builds a futuristic keyboard tale over four parts, using a Ronald Reagan sample and a variety of sharp ‘orchestra-hits’ and percussive melodies. E.L.V.I.S., based on Timothy Leary’s eight mutation phases of life, is a faux-orchestral vision of dischordant, seething beauty, and as for the closing piece, Volt… you’ll have to hear it for yourself, on the Boombox. If the whole electroacoustic thing seems a little too pointy-headed to you, this is the disc that’ll show you how wrong you are.
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Out of Canadapar Chris Elson in Paris Transatlantic #2:3 (France), 1 septembre 1995 |198|
«… really packs a punch. It positively pounds!»
Some music can be truly characterized as striking. Alain Thibault’s new album Volt, brought to us by Canadian publisher empreintes DIGITALes, really packs a punch. It positively pounds! The opening piece, Concerto pour piano MIDI, follows the classical concerto schema, but the computer driven synthesizers and sequencers drive us into a decidedly contemporary space. Jacques Drouin does an admirable job of sticking with what Thibault himself describes as “the nightmarish precision of tape.” E.L.VI.S. (Électro-lux vertige illimité synthétique) harnesses a team of willing saxophonists (Quatuor de saxophones de Montréal) to the synthesized plough and turns over some pretty unexpected ground: texts of songs made famous by Elvis Presley are synthesized and used as a rather touching foil for soundscaping (like landscaping…) Approximately equidistant between Ian Hammer’s Miami Vice theme and Pierre Boulez’s Le marteau sans maître, Thibault’s work chisels itself into our edgy modern consciousness, leaving a mark deeper than we might feel comfortable with. How many volts in a hammer, anyway?
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Présentation d’empreintes DIGITALespar Marc Bourreau in Crystal Infos (France), 1 septembre 1992 |138_003|
«On pense aux expériences jusqu’au-boutistes de Frank
Zappa et à ce que pourrait composer un ordinateur possédé par les esprits de Schönberg et Front
242.»
Né à Québec en 1956, Alain Thibault a étudié la composition à la Faculté de musique de l’Université de Montréal. Il est lauréat du concours des jeunes compositeurs de Radio Canada en 1982, dans la catégorie électroacoustique. Sa muslque peut étre qualifiée d’électro-instrumentale, car elle prend sa source dans les musiques pop, Rock et Jazz qu’elle cherche à pousser à l’extrème en utilisant les synthétiseurs, l’échantillonneur et les possibilités de programmation qu’offfent l’ordinateur. Naît une musique syncopée, secouée de rythmes frénétiques, cybernétiques, une musique qui s’écoute à cent à l’heure, agressive et trés séquencée. On pense aux expériences jusqu’au-boutistes de Frank Zappa et à ce que pourrait composer un ordinateur possédé par les esprits de Schönberg et Front 242. Finalement, ce disque me fait le même effet qu’un chœur d’orchestre classique chantant des Gospels à Moscou. C’est vraiment bizarre et on se demande dans quelle dimension on est tombé.
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Reviewpar Steven McDonald in Online Digital Music Review (ÉU), 1 juin 1991 |88|
«Volt is cause for astonishment indeed […] close to
baffling…»
One of a series of discs from Canada’s DIFFUSION i MéDIA, the organization behind the empreintes DIGITALes label. The basic thrust of the two recent series is the continued exploration of sound via electronics, and an effort to bring real electronic music into the present day. Which means, of course, that everything from MIDI to the kitchen sink gets involved, with sometimes astonishing results. Volt is cause for astonishment indeed, partly in its immediacy and listenability. The latter effect is close to baffling when you consider that the opening piece is the thirteen minute Concerto pour piano MIDI in which pianist Jacques Drouin is faced with the task of keeping pace with a wildly programmed array of synthesizers and samplers — it’s a piece that takes the tack Frank Zappa has taken with his Synclavier work on albums such as Jazz From Hell, but with a slight but important difference: here there’s a live performer working in response to the programming. As the liner notes mention, that introduces an element of danger and an element of tension. Fortunately, Drouin is up to the challenge involved. In Le soleil et l’acier soprano Pauline Vaillancourt is the human element balanced in a desolate vocal balance against the electronic instruments and racketing percussion. The piece suggests narrative, strangely enough, possessing the resonances of a good movie score for a thriller. Instruments float in and out of the mix, swirling about the pinned voice and dissipating again. It’s an oddly exciting piece, all tension and danger, remarkable, immediate and clever. OUT, on the other hand, an abbreviated version of a video opera exploring the idea of virtual reality as a way of life, is somewhat less successful. Much of the piece is dependent upon Fairlight sampling and trickery, so that the sections of the piece often sound like Art Of Noise run amok, particularly in the opening section, built around a quote from Ronald Reagan. There are some interesting sounds and ideas, but it doesn’t quite get all the way through, the piece falling prey to its own facility for flexing in any given direction. E.L.V.I.S. (Electro-lux vertige illimite synthetique) on the other hand is structured for electronic instruments and saxophone quartet and has an air of deep dark mystery about it, rather in the way of jazz turned on its head and then warped out to some other place. Here Thibault takes to long tones, electronic vocals, staccato overlays from the saxes, galloping percussive sections that seems almost normal at moments, before whirling off to some other time, space and meter. As much of a pun as the title is, the music also manages a few puns here and there, ricocheting from musical ideas that are comfortably familiar. It’s a very dynamic piece. Volt manages tc conjure up the image of electricity, though in the context of a mad scientist’s lab (the synthesized harpsichord voice and the Simmons tom tom samples may be responsible for this image). It spends most of its ime leaping about between ideas and variations on those ideas; often with a sense of computers out of control as pieces of the music suddenly speed up, slow down, speed up, slam to a stop. At first it seems as though it is never going to connect the dots… and then, one by one, the dots start to blend out and together, making a coherent sense. It’s musical illumination by machine, of course, hung on a popping, growling bass and tinkly, flashing marimba sounds, sort of a dance mix from hell. There’s more than a little of that Zappa connection again — there are sections of this piece that have the same sort of clean-edger lunatic avant-jazz sense to them, especially with the marimba going full tilt. If exploring modern electronic music is something you want to do, I can recommend this album as an excellent starting place — it’s out far enough that it’s fascinating and fresh, but connected enough to the real world at odd points that it will not drive away the curious looking to see what all the noise is about.
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Uma fuga mais ou menos temperadapar Miguel Santos in Blitz (Portugal), 2 avril 1991 |76_004| Volt, do compositor Alain Thibault, è um trabalho provocador no modo como mistura o Piano, o quarteto de sopros e as gravações. Um contraste abrupto e constante entre o silencio e o som sendo este cortante e incisivo, de forte pendo; percussivo. São audiveis as influências do rock’n’roll no modo energético e urbano com que Thibault aborda as estruturas das suas composições. Existe um mundo inteiro à espera de ser descoberto. Aqui falou-se apenas de uma meia dúzia de nomes, que podem até nsm ser os mais representativos, pois o conhecimento da divulgação destes trabalhos acaba sempre por ser bastante limitado, devido a uma certa marginalidade que este tipo de música enfrenta nos meios de divulgação «oficiais». O interesse deve ser despertado — peio menos e esse o objectivo deste texto. O resto fica ao vosso critério.
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Reviewpar Ios Smolders in Vital #19 (Pays-Bas), 1 avril 1991 |75_004|
«Thibault combines rock, jazz and
“studio-pop”…»
It was a surprise to listen to Thibault’s cd. Whereas the music of the other cd’s was based on soundscape, on Volt we hear something quite different. Structure and tempo are most important. Thibault has written for MIDI-piano, saxophone, soprano and tape. There is a lot of persussion, obviuosly digital, with very fast and intricate rhythm patterns. Thibault combines rock, jazz and “studio-pop” in compositions with names like E.L.V.I.S. (Electro-Lux Vertige Illimité Synthétique).
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Critiquepar Stephan Dunkelman in Les Cahiers de l’ACME #112 (Belgique), 28 février 1991 |57_003| Lauréat du concours de jeunes compositeurs de Radio-Canada en 82, il remporte le concours «Sound Page Competition» organisé par le magazine américain Keyboard en 86. Travail tout à fait différent de celui des deux compositeurs précèdents, sa musique possède des attaches beaucoup plus franches avec la musique traditionnelle (proche du jazz) et se caractérise par un jeu sur les rythmes et les différences d’attaques. Sa musique plaira sûrement à ceux qui aiment l’électroacoustique — pas trop — expérimentale et à ceux qui en ont un peu assez de la sclérose de la musique contemporaine instrumentale… voir même ou aux deux.
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Audio Reviewpar R Seth Friedman in Factsheet Five #39 (ÉU), 12 décembre 1990 |42|
«A suspension of time in an electronic bottle.»
Flighty fast-paced instrumental pieces for MIDI-assisted piano. Thibault explores such territory as life in the future and the eight circuits of consciousness as outlined by Tim Leary. Some pieces bring in real instruments (a sax quartet for the title cut), others altered vocals, tape loop, and further etectronic… It’s a whirlwind performance, stunning and over much faster than one would expect. A suspension of time in an electronic bottle.
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Reviewpar Alan Freeman in Audion #16 (RU), 1 octobre 1990 |33_003|
«Radically different, and totally out-on-a-limb…»
Radically different, and totally out-on-a-limb, this is a very surprising release indeed. A very complex melodic music, both stochastic and rhythmic, often jumping from one to the other. This is computer music of a very innovative kind, it could both be described as a stop on from Peter Frohmader’s Homunculus as well as Morton Subotnick’s Return; elements of both are present, yet this is far more intensive and demanding. The experience is one of frantic rhythms juxtaposed with angular melodies, a music that flies off at tangents in all expected and unexpected directions. Not easy to get into, but ultimately rewarding.
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Reviewpar Mark Vail in Keyboard #16:9 (ÉU), 1 septembre 1990 |31_003| Alain Thibault: If the name doesn’t ring a bell, it should. Co-winner of Keyboards first Reader Tape Contest (Feb.’86), Thibault focuses on a more rhythmic ancl accessible, less haughty musical feeling. His tones resemble similiar instruments (he uses drum-like timbres much of the time), but they’re played in a mechanically inhuman, fast, precise way. Le soleil et l’acier features a lovely soprano voice singing “aah,” enveloped by a sometimes subdued, sometimes frenzied and sinister sequence. Included on the CD is Thibault’s award-winning God’s Greatest Gift — complete with the sliced and diced Ronald Reagan quote, “God’s greatest gift is human life” — alone worth the price of admission.
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Extra-musical CDspar Kathy Kennedy in Musicworks #48 (Canada), 1 septembre 1990 |29|
«… an entertaining and stimulating aural event.»
A new compact-disc label called empreintes DIGITALes has come to the forefront of the “musique actuelle” scene in Quebec. The three most recently launched CDs: Volt by Alain Thibault, Lieux inouïs by Robert Normandeau, and Ligne de vie: récits électriques by Christian Calon are now being distributed throughout Canada. The three CDs share a rich breadth of digitaliy sampled sonic language, virtuosic technical production, and a preponderance for extra-musical references (visual, spatial, or litterary elements). This is perhaps indicative of the thriving dance/theatre scene in Quebec that is so eager to integrate new and original music. The most accessible (and already heard) of these three is Volt, which includes a work called Le Soleil et l’acier (Sun and steel) featuring classical singer Pauline Vaillancourt. It was used in a theatre piece last February by the internationally acclaimed Carbone 14 company. Surprisingly traditional, the piece uses expressionistic tonalities, a meandering operatic voice through chamber textures (sampled in actuality), and the words of the German poet Heinrich Müller. It is unavoidably reminiscent of Schönberg’s Verklärte Nachte, Mahler’s 2nd and 4th symphonies, and others who have drawn upon poetry and literature for their inspiration. In fact, this piece was presented at the Montréal Musée d’art contemporain and the Goethe Institute’s Blickpunte (German cultural) event. Out is part of a video opera of the same name, and E.L.V.I.S. (Electrolux vertige illimité synthétique) is a multimedia work with computer controlled visual support including a saxophone arrangement by Walter Boudreau. Concerto pour piano MIDI, however, is purely a musical piece that has very little to separate it from its traditional lineage apart from the use of electronics. The Thibault CD often feels like a digital reproduction of more traditional sounds, sometimes relying on such steadfast elements as regular rhythm and diatonic harmony. However, there is a wholesome pleasure taken in the mastery of these sounds into an entertaining and stimulating aural event. Robert Normandeau views the electroacoustic genre as an opportunity to express certain manifestations of the soul that would otherwise have been muted. He achieves this by exploring innovative sound colour and texture in what he calls “sonic landscapes” The sounds are truly appropriate to the CD’s title: Lieux inouïs (Unheard-of places). This kind of sound painting makes use of the listener’s set of acquired perceptual references, creating, along with the sound, a kind of spatial, texturai imagery whkh is, again, extra-musical. Normandeau acknowledges this in his descriptbn of the piece Jeu as a kind of “cinema for the ear.” Matrechka is divided into sections thatd are entitled by colour: steel grey, cobalt blue… His link with visual imagery is longstanding: in 1985 he composed accompanying sound for an exhibition of holosculptures (sculptures with holograms) by George Dyens. Each piece contained a different soundtrack in continuous playback. The Christian Calon CD also relies on visual metaphor but the execution is more cryptic and less facile. The 40’ piece Minuit employs a text throughout, which varies in its voice, functioning as narrator, actor, etc. The writings by the composer are inspired by, among others, Beaudelaire, Joyce and Artaud. Great care is taken on the CD jacket to explain the diverse functions of the voice and the textual and sonic writing. It is to the credit of the empreintes DIGITALes label that the entire text has been skillfully translated. In fact, each piece on all three CDs comes with an ample description as well as a note on the composer, all fully translated. Unlike some other, more established labels, this new company represents the artist with as much detail and precision as possible.
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Lignes à haute tensionpar Philippe Tétreau in MTL (Québec), 1 juillet 1990 |26_002|
«Tout tinte et clignote à la façon des flippers qui offriraient une succession de parties
gratuites.»
Rien de semblable avec Thibault. Ici, tout est plus direct. Tout tinte et clignote à la façon des flippers qui offriraient une succession de parties gratuites. Une techno-pop omniprésente et soumise aux rythmes strobascopiques qui nient toute espèce de tentative mélodique. Prosaïsme? Dérision? Sans doute, mais pas seulement, car pareille robotisation du langage musical est l’occasion pour Thibault de faire montre d’une absurde virtuosité technique. Virtuosité bien agressive, qui vous propulse là, droit devant, sans qu’aucun garde-fou puisse vous garantir de l’intensité des chocs.
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Critiquepar Ti-Poue in L’attention #3:6 (Québec), 1 juin 1990 |20| Troisième de la série de productions électroacoustiques, Volt présente des pièces bien différentes de celles de Calon et Normandeau. Alain Thibault travaille beaucoup avec le visuel et cela peut, parfois, dérouter l’auditeur qui n’a pas «vu.» Tel est le cas de God’s greatest gift. Quand on n’a pas vu la bande visuelle, il est bien difficle de comprendre le paradoxe entre la parole de Reagan: «God’s greatest gift is human life» et ses actions (guerres, bombes, etc.). La deuxième pièce, Le soleil et l’acier, de Pauline Vaillancourt (soprano) a été utilisée pour Rivages à l’abandon de Carbone 14. Le mélange voix et musique est sublime. Également à souligner, la pièce E.L.V.I.S. (Éleclro-lux vertige illimité synthétique) avec le quatuor de saxophones de Montréal.
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The Impossible Orchestrapar Andrew Jones in Montreal Mirror (Québec), 3 mai 1990 |18|
«… Volt, the third compact disc to be released on the
empreintes DIGITALes label, which has been offering recordings of
consistently high quality…»
Think of the fun Mozart would have had with a harpsichord retrofitted with MIDI ports. The musical instrument digital interface, with which one can score, arrange, and play any number of instruments from a lone trigger instrument — keyboard, drums, guitar — would have freed Mozart’s lightning-fast mind to compose works that would make complex and brilliant operas like Cosi Fan Tutte seem like child’s play. Today, MIDI has become an inexpensive way to get an impossible orchestra sound from just a single instrument. Just ask Alain Thibault. A founding member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community, the 34-year old Montréaler composes with a Macintosh mouse and music software rather than quill and quire. Thibault, who taught electroacoustic music at Université de Montréal for four years in the late ‘80s, has heard his music performed by the SMCQ, the Nouvelle Ensemble Moderne, Synthèse in France, and New Music Concerts in Toronto. “While the syntesizers are programmed to play sounds which are familiar to orchestral ears — a harpsichord or a trumpet — the articulation is something that we couldn’t accomplish with real musicians,” says Thibault of his 1989 work Concerto a For MIDI Piano, which pits pianist Jacques Drouin against a MIDI-fied orchestra that he can control with his 88 keys. “The advantage for Jacques is that he has the touch and feel of a real piano, and he can control an entire orchestra in real time. He doesn’t play against or inside the computer, it’s more like a dialogue between them. “But it’s not like performing with other musicians. When you perform a concerto with a symphonic orchestra, the conductor will adjust for individual tempos. Because the orchestra was generated with a computer, the tempo is unbelievably rigid. If you miss, you’re finished.” Concerto For MIDI Piano appears on Thibault’s new recording, Volt, the third compact disc to be released on the empreintes DIGITALes label, which has been offering recordings of consistently high quality by local composers working in the champs magnetiques of electroacoustic music. The first release, Christian Calon’s Ligne de Vie: Récits Électriques (Lifeline: Electric Stories) are gossamer sound sculptures with silence as perhaps the most important element. Although Calon thanks Bataille, Joyce, Baudelaire, and Artaud, the corruscating prose hallucinations of those famous literary pioneers are merely the inspiration for dreamy and terrifying sonic landscapes that sound like a possessed version of Brian Eno’s ambient series. Robert Normandeau’s Lieux Inouïs, (Unheard-of-Places), on the other hand, combines the playfulness of Carl Stone and the layered sound of Zoviet France. His brilliant Jeu begins with a chant that’s split, phased, and processed until it’s completely unrecognizable. Thematically working with metaphors of game and chance, Normandeau takes pure sounds, shifting and shaping them until a juke box resembles a shower of cobalt, and wobbly fragments of sound trigger deep memories. Thibault parts company with his label mates is in his dynamic sensibility. While many electroacoustic composers steep their work in overlapping ambience and extended atmospheres, Thibault is more interested in rhythm, something he gotfrom growing up with the devil’s music, rock’n’roll. It’s no mistake that Concerto For MIDI Piano sounds like a cyberpunk Prokofiev. “I come from the electroacoustic boom of the ‘70s,” explains Thibault. “I was interested in the richness of the sounds I could get from tapes and synthesizers. The aesthetic at the time was to not use any parameters familiar to instrumental music, like notes or rhythm. But in the ‘80s I broke away from that, and went back to notes and rhythms. Rhythm is the most important parameter for me. I need rhythm, the propulsion of time.” Thibault’s rhythmic arsenal is best heard in two multi-media works also found on Volt. E.L.V.I.S. (Electro-lux Vertige Illimité Synthétique) is a deliciously sly work that has the Montréal Saxophone Quartet exploring Timothy Leary’s headspace and finding The King in a Henry Cow groove. OUT, a science-fiction video opera composed on the Fairlight CMI, won Keyboard’s Sound Page Competition for 1986. Taking place in the year 2084, OUT tells the story of hapless souls lost in the “psychic immigration spaces” of a world governed by a computer-generated simulacra of Ronald Reagan. “I was reading a lot of Philip K Dick books, and Reagan was still president at the time,“ confesses Thibault. “I think Dick was one of the greatest writers in science fiction. His conception of the future was determined by the drugs he experimented with, the music he listened to, the religion and culture of the times he lived in. That’s not science fiction that’s reality.“
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