This Cycle celebrates sound (a major discovery of the twentieth century) and concrete music. It is a fiftieth-anniversary homage to the inventiveness of Pierre Schaeffer, who clearly created an upheaval in the world of music that has had no precedent.
The 8 sections of this work by Dhomont were inspired by the writings of Ronald D Laing - the texts are borrowed from the 'Politics of Experience', 'Knots', and especially 'The Divided Self'.
The four works on this CD by Francis Dhomont play with diversion. The diversion: of musical discourse in Novars, of sound sources in Chiaroscuro, of sensory perception (synesthesia) in Météores (Meteors), and of nature in Signé Dionysos
Francis Dhomont is arguably the greatest living composer of electroacoustic music. Five-time winner at the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition (France), he has received numerous other international awards. Points de Fuite, Mourir un Peu and Espace/Escape on this superb CD
Utopian, these aural mirages surely are — not in the political sense of the Ideal City, but in the etymological sense of ou-topos: belonging to no specific location, except for imaginary territories; creatures of illusion and, in this case, sound. These aural “non-lieux,” these chimeras of perception, resulting from treatments and made from unlikely parts that are losing their identity, stripped off of any audible source, are fictional beings born out of a dreamer’s nomadic invention.
The title Jalons (Milestones) was taken from surveying because this disc surveys a musical landscape that extends over a space of fifteen years. While the very different eras and interests to which these eight works (from the years 1985, ’90, ’92, ’95, ’98, ’99, 2000 and 2001) bear witness are not comprehensive enough to constitute a retrospective, this disc is nevertheless a mini-panorama that completes other, more thematic, recorded releases; it also presents a few pieces that can be heard in concert only occasionally.
The 24 préludes à la vie are part of a series of works whose purpose is to illustrate the resources of musique concrête.
A re-issue of Globalalia which explores human speech and the syllables common to all, and Imago, which is constructed entirely out of the sound of 2 whiskey glasses being clinked together. Classic Wishart at his best!
A seminal work from 1977 created on analogue equipment - a stunning piece of music which demonstrates the art of transformation. Now re-issued on a double CD with Anticredos and Voiceprints as a bonus.
This 3-movement, secular oratorio explores our collective and individual experience of the mass industrial society in which we live, through the medium of the human voice.
