ABOUT THE POWER OF MUSIC

 

“Popular Music 1” (selections) Dieter Roth - 1966

Is music a neutral art form?

Is it simply a tapestry of sounds that calls for discreet listening as we go about our daily lives?

I don't believe in transparency, nor in the harmlessness of music.

Music is an active principle.

It conveys visions of the world, modes of thought, mental maps and introspective surveys.

For me, music is inseparable from cosmology.

This is obvious in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, which evokes the rhythmic mechanics and harmonic geometry of a post-Copernican world.

It's also evident in the Berlin School and its cosmic tropism, with its sound spaces deepened by reverberations and multiplied by delays, its harmonic wakes mingling with the propulsion of sequences.

I think all music is a cosmology. It builds a world.

At the same time, it is a vehicle for abstraction and questioning. There's a philosophical, existential, metaphysical quest dimension to music, which doesn't proceed through words and rational thought, but through the language of sounds, harmonics, space, time and silence.

All music is an exploration, an experiment on the frontiers of thought, imagination, vision and, quite simply, existence.

This does not contradict the festive, recreational dimension of music.

It can address the body or the mind, most often both.

In the course of my musical work, in my search for new sounds and compositional forms, I feel as if I'm moving forward on this initiatory quest...

MY CREATIVE WORK IS A JOURNEY....

(“Music for Electric Metronome” Toshi Ichiyanagi - 1960)

Any creative work is a trajectory, a journey.

We never stand still. We move forward. We step sideways. We skip a step. Sometimes we go back. But we never stand still.

Creating music can be a mercenary, mercantile task, and sometimes you can't do otherwise when you make a living from your music, at least you can do it with integrity.

Creating music can also be an intimate, personal process, the vector of an existential quest, driven by the desire for new horizons, for surpassing oneself, for deepening oneself...

For me, the extraordinary power of sound is that it can express what words cannot...

And thus to initiate an intimate, profound, instinctive and necessary form of expression.

My compositions, my albums and the succession of my albums trace a path of life, sometimes fragile, sometimes determined...

For me, music is the fine tuning of a soul, a life, a sensitivity, an ear: mine.

It's a tool for self-understanding, a reflective mirror, a vital driving force.

Creating music, however, is not an egocentric, even autistic process.

To create music is to propose wavelengths, harmonics, that can vibrate the ear, the sensitivity, the soul of the listener.

I create music for this small listening community that has followed and supported me for years, all over the world, from Chile to Kazakhstan, from Canada to Australia and in all the worlds crossed by these diagonals...

And the existence of this listening community, of this fraternity of sensitivity and imagination, of this immense, collective, off-center virtual musical instrument that can vibrate to the same sounds and understand what I'm trying to express through sounds, all this is obviously what drives me to continue, to create, to share, in spite of and against the standards, compromises and diktats of the new dominant ecosystems of musical distribution...

Basically, today, I'm embarking on the next stages of my journey of life and creation without any second thoughts. The destination doesn't matter, it's the dynamics of creation that matter...

WHAT IS COMPOSING MUSIC?

 

It can be intellectual, planned, calculated, written down and fully mastered.

My approach is more intuitive, less controlled...

 

I see my DAW (Ableton Live) as a kind of playground, an abacus, a chessboard.

After recording the basic tracks and listening to each other, it's time to edit.

I approach this stage in visual terms, and sculpt the music by shifting, erasing, superimposing patterns, playing with colors and silence, playing with superimpositions, alignments, phase shifts...

 

Often, it's visual intuition rather than sound or harmony that guides me through this stage.

I erase, shift, copy and paste patterns, from one track and color to another.

The tracks on my DAW are like a checkerboard where I move sounds and patterns around.

I don't calculate. I obey intuitions, and interact with my listening to the piece, in real time.

I have the impression of composing with a form of floating attention, of free listening, which suggests to me in the moment this or that act of editing.

 

I don't know how to qualify or define this process.

 

It's a particular level of consciousness, where choices and decisions impose themselves on me, without my thinking about them in a reasoned way.

 

I very rarely "undo" these editing gestures.

 

When I listen to them again and again, they impose themselves by their relevance.

The grids and tracks of my DAW are like an African divination table, where displacements, deletions and manipulations obey secret necessities, beyond the randomness of appearances...

 

And what is written, in this form of musical writing interacting with the visual structure of the tracks, is music that is unthought of, but felt, that imposes itself by its necessity and its obviousness...

THE DIFFERENT WORLDS OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC

 

 

                                          (“Emmett Williams' Ear” Dick Higgins - 1977)

 On reflection, I have the impression that under the label of "electronic music", there are different worlds that coexist, overlapping or not...

— heirs of the Berlin School: they offer variations on a now "classic" musical genre, based on the great ancestors, Schulze and Tangerine Dream. They use hardware synthesizers, often modular, and produce a highly electronic sound coupled with sequence loops. Is this an illusion, or are the main musicians in this genre (mostly) men and women of a certain age already, who in their youth experienced the heyday of this musical trend?

— the "cinematic" genre, designed to provide soundtracks for films or TV series, but also a commercial label for many virtual instrument manufacturers, offering emulations of classical instruments and orchestras. The target audience is assumed to master certain classical orchestration and composition techniques. It is interesting to note a certain standardization of soundtracks, with sound and stylistic conventions that are often repetitive (Hans Zimmer set the standards for the genre).

— the ambient genre, which is distinct from, but sometimes overlapping with, the previous two. Today's ambient music, as I perceive it, covers a fairly broad spectrum: at one extreme, what used to be called "new age" music, a fairly uniform sound environment without too much relief, accompanying meditation, relaxation, sleep and so on. At the other extreme, more sophisticated music, moving towards minimalism, abstraction, dark ambient and drone.

— scholarly or experimental electro-acoustic or acousmatic music, developed in particular by institutions such as IRCAM or GRM (in France), where profitability and commercial distribution are not the primary objectives; composers are often subsidized, benefit from residencies and so on.  It's a place of innovation in sound, technique and form. It's worth noting that the new tools developed in these institutions are gradually becoming more widely available, as demonstrated by granular synthesis plug-ins, 3D spatialization plug-ins, multi-channel broadcasting, etc.

— techno in its various sub-currents, which constitutes a culture in its own right, with its own audience, its own venues, its own subdivisions...

Of course, there are many hybridizations between these categories.

I'm particularly interested in the emergence of the "modern classical" or "contemporary classical" movement, represented in particular by musicians like  musicians such as Ólafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm, Roger Eno and others, who offer a synthesis of classical music, electro-acoustic music, minimalism and ambient, and cinematic music. The fact that this demanding, sometimes experimental and relatively "academic" trend is enjoying real public and commercial success is encouraging....

As for me, I feel I've been through all these different genres (with the exception of techno), but that my "musical anchor" is now at the epicenter of "serious" ambient and "contemporary classical", with a zest of abstraction and sound experimentation to spice things up...

"Sphaera Armillaris" released on all download / streaming platforms

 

AUDION #76 - REVIEWS

 

 

(review by Andy Garibaldi)

 

 

(Review by Alan Freeman)

Many thanks to Andy and Alan for these reviews...

Audion Link

Next Steps?

 I have several works in progress, some of them are already completed...

 In february 2024, I have an album to be released in the erecord  series of the British label Whitelabrecs . 

The title is: The Story of the Sun, Moon, and Stars. This album, draws its inspiration and artwork from a vintage book by a woman, Agnes Giberne, under this title, published in Cincinnati in 1898.

This was the heyday of imaginative, conquering and speculative astronomy, a telescopic astronomy, driven by such great figures as Jules Vernes, Camille Flammarion, Percival Lowell...

This detour into late 19th-century astronomy frees me from the stereotypes of contemporary space music or cosmic music, and I try to evoke this exploration of thye sky with a different musical language.

This release will have a  pdf booklet with a beautiful artwok, like CDs.

 

My second release for DiscoGecko Recordings, scheduled in the first quarter 2024 is a new exploration blending electronic minimalism and "modern classical" atmospheres. It is called Impressionism and is a musical hommage to the pictural world of Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh and other French painters.

 

In the meantime, I will probably release two new albums on my Bandcamp page. These projects are almost completed, and they are opening new paths in my musical journey. I am very excited by these new directions, on the contemporary and experimental edge of ambient musics and I cannot wait to share them with my fans and followers....

 

 

 

 

"SPHAERA ARMILLARIS" ON BANDCAMP!