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Radio // Zoo
Zoo
Piste 1 de Zoo
CD: empreintes DIGITALes (1995) IMED 9526
1 août 2001
Par François Couture in All-Music Guide (ÉU), 1 août 2001

Texte

«Highly entertaining and witty, it illustrates Lander’s absurd sense of humor.»

Electroacoustic composer Dan Lander released his first CD in 1995 on the Montréal label empreintes DIGITALes. Zoo regroups four works created between 1988 and 1992. The first two are the most important, interesting and disturbing; they both address communication through the use of speech-based sound material. Talking to a Loudspeaker is a 24 minute reflection on radio. Highly entertaining and witty, it illustrates Lander’s absurd sense of humor. It opens on a series of excerpts from the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, everyone saying “Please Mister Speaker” and “Thanks Mister Speaker” (read the title of the piece again if you don’t understand why). After this introduction, the listener is taken through clichés about the weather, a staged call-in show plagued with technical difficulties, a collage of radio publicity spots — even 30 seconds of dead air. Destroy: Information Only is a lot more disturbing. A piece of audio vérité, it features friends and relatives of the composer recorded in their homes, reminiscing about a surgery he had. Over 34 minutes, their vague memories and personal anecdotes are confronted and mixed with acousmatic bits, forming an intimidating form of auto-exorcism. Failed Suicide also uses human speech as its basis, but with less interesting resutls. City Zoo / Zoo City arranges field recordings of a zoo into a loose narrative while blurring distinctions between the natural and the mechanical. Lander’s pieces require attentive listening in order to follow the discourse. His approach is highly personal, but his constant relying on words might unnerve some listeners.

blogue@press-409 press@409
1 décembre 1998
Par Peter Wullen in Gonzo Circus (Belgique), 1 décembre 1998

Texte

Elektroakoestische muziek roept het beeld op van moeilijke en vergezochte pokkeherrie. Maar de term dekt de lading al lang niet meer. Leg je oor maar eens te luisteren bij het Canadese empreintes DIGITALes. Uit de elkaar snel opvolgende releases van het label zou je zelfs kunnen afleiden dat het genre zijn eigen weg volgt en een zekere mate van populariteit kent. Dankzij digitale opnametechnieken kan ieder op pad met een DAT-recorder en zijn eigen soundscapes maken. Het verschil zit hem natuurlijk in de verwerking, de eindmix en het montageproces. empreintes DIGITALes bevat op dat gebied zowat het kruim van de huidige generatie elektroakoestische componisten. Luister maar eens naar Zoo van Dan Lander of naar Autour van Claude Schryer. De eerste is een video-performance — en geluidskunstenaar die op een verrassende manier collages maakt van gevonden geluiden, radiofragmenten en toevallige gesprekken.

Lander speelt op een subtiele manier met zijn geluidsmateriaal en koppelt op een grappige manier verschillende geluiden aan elkaar. De plunderphonics van Talking to a Loudspeaker zet je radio op zijn kop, haalt hem uit elkaar en steekt hem op een onverwachte manier weer ineen. Op Destroy: Information Only haalt hij via conversaties met bekenden en familie herinneringen op aan een rugoperatie die hij ooit onderging. In Zoo benadrukken de digitaal vervormde gevonden geluiden het artificiële karakter van een zoo in een urbane setting.

blogue@press-286_001 press@286_001
1 décembre 1998
Par Philip von Zweck in Aegri Somnia Vana (ÉU), 1 décembre 1998

Texte

«A very smart CD.»

Zoo is a must-have CD. Talking to a Loudspeaker, a piece originally part of the New American Radio Series, was one of the first pieces to make me think about sound, text, and communication. It is an amusing an intelligent run through ideas of radio and communication, broken down in to short, easy-to-digest pieces. For example [The News], there is an exercise in radio news, which presents two sides of an abortion protest, the political right positioned in the right speaker, and the political left in the left speaker, allowing the listener to adjust the balance. Destroy: Information Only is an experimental documentary of Lander’s problems with a back injury. It’s a frightful but beautifully executed piece. Failed Suicide is the shortest and oddest piece, in which unidentified voices depict, in a very strange manner, a suicide. The last track, City Zoo / Zoo City, is a piece of digitally manipulated field recordings of a zoo, reinventing the animals as anything but animals. A very smart CD.

blogue@press-287_5 press@287_5
23 février 1998
Par Christopher W Becker in Factsheet Five #63 (ÉU), 23 février 1998

Texte

«Unbelievable audio collage…»

Unbelievable audio collage that makes heavy use of both broadcast media and natural conversations. The Weather [2nd movement of Talking to a Loudspeaker] is one of the best pieces here. Dan gathered up various televised comments about the weather and sewed them together in a fit of weird inspiration. It’s not often you get to hear that stupid weatherman voice turned back on itself to make it even more idiotic. Other tracks feature the speech of doofy locals interjected with the sound of fluffy jackhammers, extreme examples of voice manipulation, fart noises that intrude on a crew of campers, and a new audio landscape of the city zoo.

blogue@press-259 press@259
23 juin 1997
Par Noah Wane in Splendid E-Zine (ÉU), 23 juin 1997

Texte

«… such a riveting narrative…»

Listening to Dan Lander’s Talking to a Loudspeaker is like unwittingly tuning into someone else’s conversation and becoming so enthralled that you can’t tune out despite feeling like you shouldn’t be listening. In this case the conversation has been constructed entirely from snippets of magnetic tape containing miscellaneous bits and pieces of radio signal. The genius of the piece is that it manages to sustain such a riveting narrative despite being entirely constructed of out-of-context words and phrases — like some sort of rhetorical collage. Destroy: Information Only is a piece in a similar vein, only this time the collage is made of larger pieces — whole interviews conducted by the composer with friends and family who are asked to describe their memories of an injury he had had 20 years earlier. Again the sense of aural voyeurism is strangely addictive. Also included on Zoo are the works Failed Suicide and City Zoo / Zoo City. For anyone looking for intimate/compelling art, Zoo amply fits the bill.

blogue@press-244_3 press@244_3
1 mai 1997
in SOCAN, Words & Music (Canada), 1 mai 1997

Texte

Another disc from the same label is devoted to music by Torontonian Dan Lander, who generally works with prerecorded text rather than tones. Of the four pieces, the most fascinating is Talking to a Loudspeaker, a 24-minute, often humorous collage of House of Commons discussions, weather reports, radio announcements and even broadcast “dead air”…

blogue@press-238_002 press@238_002

Autres textes dans

  • Voir (Québec), 13 février 1997
    «[une] collection déjà abondante de disques consacrés à l’électroacoustique québécoise et étrangère.»
  • SOCAN, Paroles & Musique (Canada), 1 janvier 1997
    «… les choses vont bon train!»

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