Nicolas Bernier

Travaux Mécaniques gathers five works that Nicolas Bernier composed between 2005 and 2011, most of them built from the sounds of machines from an era he says he did not live through: real mechanisms set in motion by physical force. Several were conceived for multichannel playback, from 3.1 to 8 channels, and the disc was a finalist for record of the year at the Prix Opus 2011-12.

Writing Machine (2005), commissioned by the ZKM in Karlsruhe and premiered in its Kubus, applies the cut-up technique of William S Burroughs to Burroughs’ own words, treated as material and rhythm rather than meaning, alongside the electrified and distorted sounds of writing machines. For Liaisons mécaniques, commissioned by Musiques & Recherches, Bernier sampled cameras, 8mm projectors, music boxes and antique toys, then took them apart and built new gears from the fragments, which act like ties and slurs between events. It won a second prize ex æquo at CIMESP 2007 in São Paulo and a mention at Bourges.

Dans le ventre de la machine starts from feedback produced with loudspeakers and piezo microphones and from a machine of cogs, wheels and levers built by his carpenter friend Alexandre Landry; it brings to mind Mario Savio’s 1964 speech about putting “your bodies upon the gears”, and received the Motus Prize at the Destellos competition in 2011. Les chambres de l’atelier moves from room to room of the workshop like a camera, and the one-minute Antithèse électronique opens the disc with everything the other pieces are not: synthesis, white noise and beats borrowed from a punk band.

Born in Ottawa in 1977, Nicolas Bernier moves between musique concrète, live electronics, post-rock, glitch, field recording, installation and video. He was a PhD candidate at the University of Huddersfield under Pierre Alexandre Tremblay and Monty Adkins, and in 2013 received the Golden Nica of Prix Ars Electronica for frequencies (a).

DVD-Audio in OGplus, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 12114, 2012.