★empreintes DIGITALes
Fluides
Five electroacoustic works by Horacio Vaggione, from newest to oldest: GRM, ZKM and Bourges commissions built on transformed piano and violin sounds, back to Fractal C, made in 1983-84 at Ircam on a VAX 780 from a fractal Cantor set model.
Petites Étincelles
Five acousmatic works by Manuella Blackburn from 2012 to 2017, built from tiny sounds: cracking ice, camera shutters, clock ticks from a London museum, and sitar and sarod recorded with Indian musicians of Milapfest in Liverpool.
Yawar Fiesta
Annette Vande Gorne’s spatialized electroacoustic opera on a libretto by the poet Werner Lambersy, realized 2006-12: a condor against a bull in an Andean village, told through studio-recorded and transformed voices in 7.1 channels. Blu-ray audio.
Histoires d’Histoire
Paul Dolden’s maximalist take on ancient myths and tuning systems, 2012 to 2016: the five-movement Music of Another Present Era plus two pieces for soloist and tape with guitarist Maurizio Grandinetti and trumpeter Łukasz Gothszalk.
Nécropolis
Four multichannel works by Åke Parmerud from 2005 to 2011, commissioned by the GRM, IMEB and ZKM: a blind person’s dreams, the crystal glasses of his parents’ parties, four voices from around the world, and a catacomb of decaying masterpieces.
Growl
Five works by Åke Parmerud from 2004 to 2015 that push acousmatic music towards techno, noise and metal: machine sounds, a vinyl crackle piece for the ZKM Klangdom, New Zealand birds, and a choir of four metal growlers.
Travaux Mécaniques
Five works by Nicolas Bernier from 2005 to 2011 made from old machines: typewriters and William S Burroughs’ cut-up method, gears from cameras, projectors and music boxes, a carpenter-built machine of cogs and levers. DVD-Audio.
Bouteilles de Klein
Natasha Barrett’s concert works and remixed installations from 2003 to 2008, from hydrophones at a Norwegian glacier and a 2000-geophone seismic recording to a cello piece with Tanja Orning, in stereo, surround and binaural mixes across two discs. DVD-Audio.
(60) Project
A single 60-minute piece assembled by Monty Adkins at the Ina-GRM in 2008 from sounds sent by 66 composers and sound artists, from François Bayle and Francis Dhomont to Fennesz, Tim Hecker and Christina Kubisch, for the 60th anniversary of musique concrète.
Interstices
Eight acousmatic works by the Belgian composer Ingrid Drese from 1996 to 2008, nearly 110 minutes in all, including the Ina-GRM commission Sept œils sauvages with texts by Marc Jaffeux and the octophonic Horloge à feu. DVD-Audio.
Musiques Naïves
Six works from 1986 to 1994 in which Yves Daoust turns everyday sounds and borrowed classics into music: Chopin recorded note by note, Schubert under Radio-Canada archives, Montréal church bells and dripping icicles.
Anecdotes
Yves Daoust's 1991 disc of works built on fragments of the classical repertoire: pieces for piano, flute and accordion with tape on the theme of the performer's solitude, a baroque suite for a harpsichordist-actress, and the Bourges-winning Quatuor.
Bruits
Yves Daoust's portrait of Montréal through its noise, the three-part Bruits (1997-2001), with Impromptu 2 on Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu, the 1981 analog-synthesis piece La gamme and Ouverture, a GMEB commission on Québec history.
Humeur de Facteur
Humeur de facteur, a six-movement acousmatic cycle by harpsichord builder Yves Beaupré, conceived as an ordre after François Couperin and built from six hours of recordings made in his workshop: tools, saws, strings, tacks and the resonating case.
Claire-Voie
Four works by the Toronto composer Wende Bartley from 1985 to 1993, built on voice and on the collective story of women: lunar mythology with mezzo-soprano Fides Krucker, Balkan songs stretched by granular synthesis, a Javanese gamelan turned to breaking ice.
Miniatures Concrètes
Twenty-four clips of exactly three minutes by 25 composers, from Åke Parmerud and Natasha Barrett to Roger Doyle and Katharine Norman, most built from the same three given sounds, released in 1998 for the 50th anniversary of musique concrète.
Migrations
Three acousmatic triptychs by Stéphane Roy from 1998 to 2003, marking five years in St Louis and the return home: Montréal street recordings with du Bellay and Baudelaire, a homage to Pierre Schaeffer for musique concrète’s 50th, and a circus piece.
Kaleidos
Four works by Stéphane Roy from 1987 to 1994 that move from expressive early tape pieces to Mimetismo, where Arturo Parra's guitar blends into the tape, and Crystal Music, composed largely at CCRMA in Stanford.
Rhizomes
Seven acousmatic works by Belgian composer Stephan Dunkelman from 1991 to 2000, many born from dance and from his work with Michèle Noiret, including the Stockholm prize-winner Metharcana and Rituellipses, honoured at Ars Electronica in 1995.
Délirantes
Nine works by the Havana-born composer Sergio Barroso from 1982 to 1995, most for microtonal Yamaha FM synthesizers he plays himself, with oboe, violin, viola and bassoon soloists and echoes of charanga, flamenco and Cuban street music.