★empreintes DIGITALes
Amore
Roxanne Turcotte’s 35-minute electroacoustic tale of love in a cinema, made in 1986-88 and 1992, with ringing telephones, French folk songs, a nod to Wes Montgomery and texts by Élise Turcotte; 2nd prize at the International New Music Composer’s Comp…
Figures
Reissue of Robert Normandeau’s album of four acousmatic and mixed works from 1995 to 1999, including the Golden Nica winner Le renard et la rose, built from voices of a Little Prince radio play, and Figures de rhétorique with pianist Jacques Drouin.
Tangram
Five multitrack works by Robert Normandeau from 1990 to 1993, his “cinema for the ear” period, built from a child's voice, four teenagers, Mozart's chamber music and the elements, each recorded as a live diffusion over eight loudspeakers at The Banff…
Lieux Inouïs
Robert Normandeau's early acousmatic works from 1984 to 1989, his “cinema for the ear”: the many meanings of the word jeu, a requiem made only of requiem fragments, and music first written for Georges Dyens' holosculptures.
Puzzles
Five 16-channel works by Robert Normandeau from 2001 to 2003, concert pieces reworked from his theatre music for Brigitte Haentjens, including StrinGDberg for hurdy-gurdy and cello and the Fribourg prizewinner Chorus. 2017 reissue of the 2005 album.
Clair de Terre
Three acousmatic works by Robert Normandeau from 1999 to 2001: Malina, made only from Claire Marchand’s shakuhachi, Erinyes, frozen onomatopoeias of actors from a staging of Electra, and the 36-minute Clair de terre, which translates the grammar of c…
Sondes
Six works by the Toronto composer Randall Smith from 1995 to 1999, three for tape alone and three mixed pieces for cello, accordion, double bass and alto flute, remastered by Ernest Cholakis.
L’Oreille Voit
The first album by the Toronto composer Randall Smith: five tape works from 1988 to 1994, from water music made without any water to The Black Museum, his tribute to the GRM, first prize at the Luigi Russolo competition in 1993.
Alter Ego
Debut album of Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, five acousmatic works from 1997 to 2004 made between Montréal, Birmingham and Huddersfield, from a remix built around rapper Dice B to a Baudelaire piece on three Montréal church bells. DVD-Audio.
Léone
Philippe Mion’s acousmatic opera Léone (1993), on a libretto by Philippe Minyana drawn from a true news story: six singers conducted by Laurent Cuniot, with the whole orchestra replaced by tape composed at the Ina-GRM and Grame.
Titakti
Four acousmatic studies by Philippe Le Goff from 1991 to 1995, built on recordings he made between 1988 and 1993 among the Inuit of Nunavik and Baffin Island: conversations, laughter, chants, wind and the shamanic drum.
Un Son Peut en Cacher un Autre
Seven acousmatic works by Pete Stollery from 1993 to 2003, playing on the ambiguity between recognisable sounds and pure sound: a key in a lock, a roulette wheel, bicycle spokes, Aberdeen streets, old industrial machines. Each piece introduced by a f…
Délires de Plaisirs
Paul Dolden's 49-minute Entropic Twilights, layered from hundreds of separately recorded parts for voices, brass, gamelan, drum kits and saucepans, with two Resonance pieces for flute and for ten string parts and tape, made between 1994 and 2004.
Polyphonie-Polychrome
Patrick Ascione's acousmatic triptych of 1984 to 1989, commissioned by the Ina-GRM: three long multi-part pieces built on his idea of tape as a canvas for sound, with a preface by Michel Chion.
Aérosol
Five acousmatic works by Ned Bouhalassa from 1990 to 1998 tracing his move from cinema for the ear towards techno, from Jets, written for San Francisco’s Sound Traffic Control, to the self-portrait Constamment and the Russolo prizewinner Attraction.
Isostasie
Natasha Barrett’s first years in Norway, 1998 to 2001: Arctic weather, red snow, a 24-hour rain forest recording and a valley of machines, with three extracts from Displaced:Replaced, an installation driven by live meteorological sensors.
L’Adieu au S.O.S.
Four works by Monique Jean from 1997 to 2001 on destruction, memory and the real, with texts by Hélène Cixous, Alejo Carpentier and Denise Desautels, contrabass improvisations by Joëlle Léandre and, in low memory #2, flutist Claire Marchand.
Impulsion
The tape works of Québec composer Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux, made between 1970 and 1981 at the GRM in Paris, in Bourges and at Simon Fraser University, from the vocal vertigo of Arksalalartôq to the eighteen-minute Constellation I.
Préludes à la Vie
Michel Chion’s second empreintes DIGITALes album pairs two musique concrète works eighteen years apart: Le prisonnier du son (1972), his first melodrama, and the Vingt-quatre préludes à la vie (1989-90), which answer it.
Mondes Inconnus
Eight works by Monty Adkins from 1994 to 2005, 93 minutes at 96 kHz, from a train journey after Turner and a Hubble-inspired piece made of rocks and gas cylinders to drum 'n' bass, William Gibson and a flute piece for Alejandro Escuer. DVD-Audio.