Paysages Imaginaires

Released date: 1st March 2019

Label: Mikroclimat

Album’s description

Paysages imaginaires (transl. Imaginary Landscapes) explores the aesthetic, perceptive and symbolic relationships between sounds taken from recorded soundscapes (train stations, church bells, forests, wind, storm, insects) and recordings of bass clarinet, electric guitar, synthesizers, and a modified old RCA Victor phonograph gramophone replica. Composed in Montréal, Paris, and Athens, the work orchestrates landscapes and imaginary spaces with the intention of creating an abstract narrative journey within a constantly changing soundscape.

I believe that the use of noise / Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. The sound of a truck at fifty miles per hour. Static between the stations. Rain. We want to capture and control these sounds, to use them not as sound effects but as musical instruments.[1]

This project is a personal take on Cage’s envision of noise musicalisation and the possible encounter between contemporary instrumental music, electroacoustic music and soundscape. Through musical soundscapes orchestration with instrumental and electronic imitation of natural phenomenon’s, the album explores the possible relationship between recontextualised nature-inspired improvisations, annotated music, and reconstruction of sonic landscapes.

The sound recording of musical instruments have been modified making, by moments, the clarinet sound like rain, the electric guitar like bells and the specifically modified vinyl of the gramophone like a train horn or noise textures. The gramophone was recorded with a contact microphone placed on the horn to sonically transfer all the subtle sounds induced by the possible manipulations on it. This system, coupled with real-time computer sound processing, created a new hybrid percussive/electronic instrument with which it has been possible to improvise, play and record along the bass clarinet, guitars and reconstructed landscapes.

The result is an album oscillating between instrumental, acousmatic and naturalist soundscapes references and aesthetics, blending them into a united and coherent flow of sounds organisation.

Pieces information’s

Accalmie | 8'03"

Musicians: Charlotte Layec (bass clarinet), Pierre-Luc Lecours (synthesiser)