★empreintes DIGITALes
Oscillations planétaires
Oscillations planétaires was realized in 2017-18 at the composer’s studio in Montréal and premiered on July 13, 2018 on the radio program Klangkunst broadcast by Deutschlandfunk Kultur (Germany). Oscillations planétaires evokes geology. In all the layers that make it, from its core to its surface areas, Planet Earth is inhabited by undulatory motions of extremely varied temporal scales. Some are inscribed in a geological timeframe while others follow a daily cycle. This oscillatory ensemble cont…
L'inaudible
Stéphane Roy is an acousmatic composer. His art esthetics allow him, after thorough experimentations with sound materials, to extract expressive properties and give these works teleological motion. He is also a musicologist. He has written a number of papers and a book on the analysis of electroacoustic music."In my approach to composition, the path a piece will take is never determined upfront. Form and structure do not exist prior to the realization of the piece: when I probe the imaginary wor…
Yegl
“The electroacoustic works of Elsa Justel are striking for their rich morphological invention: canvases made of minuscule yet consistently varied sounds; stratified figures made of multiple simultaneous shots, intertwining with one another; tremblings turning into sharp and lightning objects; objects of all sizes, objects so diverse they relentlessly keep hold of your attention. […] This music imitates nothing; it is there, warm and savant, controlled yet free, vigorous and intelligent.” - Horac…
Univers parallèles
The work of Todor Todoroff might be a bit closer to architecture and structural engineering than to conventional electro-acoustic composition. Almost all of the pieces on Univers parallèles are based on gestures and movements which create a sound, whether that’s a dancer on stage doing avant-garde steps, or a painter applying the brush to the canvas, or the action of flowing water. From quite small and intimate movements, large-scaled and mysterious sounds emerge. On Rupture d’équilibre, one of …
Racines
Annie Mahtani (UK, 1981) is an electroacoustic composer, sound artist and performer working and living in Birmingham (UK). She studied with Jonty Harrison at master’s and doctoral level at the University of Birmingham, completing her PhD in 2008. Her output encompasses electronic music composition from acousmatic music to free improvisation. As a collaborator, Annie Mahtani has worked extensively with dance and theatre, and on site-specific installations. With a strong interest in field recordin…
Micro-lieux
Nikos Stavropoulos (Athens, Greece, 1975) is a composer of predominantly acousmatic and mixed music. He read music at the University of Wales (Bangor, Wales, UK), where he studied composition with Andrew Lewis and completed a doctorate at the University of Sheffield (England, UK) under the supervision of Adrian Moore. His music is performed and broadcast regularly around the world and has been awarded internationally on several occasions. His practice is concerned with notions of tangibility and…
Accord ouvert
Sophie Delafontaine studied acousmatic composition at the Conservatoire royal de Mons / Arts2 - École supérieure des arts (Mons, Belgium) with Annette Vande Gorne, Philippe Mion, and Ingrid Drese. She obtained her master’s degree in 2014. In her practice of composition, Delafontaine likes to recover, recycle, and renew her sonic materials. Her acousmatic works are strongly influenced by her creations for dance and the theatre. She draws inspiration from the ambience, atmospheres, texts, stories …
Cabinets de Curiosité
“Wunderkammern or ‘cabinets of curiosities,’ of the 16th and 17th centuries, were fabulous collections of objects brought together, ordered and displayed to inspire curiosity and wonder. They might include religious relics, stuffed birds and animals, shells, artefacts from distant and ancient cultures, mineral and plant specimens, paintings and drawings. In fact, almost anything. As a small boy, the ‘cabinet of curiosity’ that intrigued me was the large, tabletop radio in our kitchen, with its ‘…
Cycle Nautique
3rd solo album by Canadian composer David Berezan living in the United Kingdom. “Nautical Cycle” (2011-17). After completing a BA in History (1988) at the University of Calgary, a Diploma in Composition (1996) at Grant MacEwan College (Edmonton) and an MMus in Composition (2000) at the University of Calgary, David Berezan moved to the UK and completed a PhD in Electroacoustic Composition (2003) at the University of Birmingham (UK). In 2012 he was appointed Professor in Electroacoustic Music Comp…
Mistpouffers
Mistpouffers is a selection of three compositions completed between 2014-16, composed by French artist and improviser eRikm. Each piece runs approximately 17-18 minutes in length with two based on 8-channel fixed medium and one in stereo. “Draugalimur” (2014-15, 16). Draugalimur (Phantom Limb, in English) is a crossing from the intimate to vast open spaces, traversed by the elements in motion. Ice, air, gas and fire are in perpetual activity in the chaotic and primitive far off. It resembles the…
Troubles
Monique Jean is a composer whose
dense and raw sound universe will inevitably deeply engage the
listener. Her musical discourse is flawless, meticulously written,
giving sound the time needed to accurately deploy in all its sensory
perception. It is An honest sensory, refusing routine, is giving each
pieces of this disc a unique color. This is her third full-length effort with Canadian imprint empreintes DIGITALes, it was mastered by Christian Bouchard and offers two works on Troubles: T.A.…
Ténébrisme
Adam Stanović (né Stansbie) started composing electronic music over twenty years ago. Initial experiments with tape recorders and a four-track mini-disc player led him to read music and technology at both Leeds College of Music (England, UK) and University of Leeds (England, UK), where he was introduced to computer music by Dale Jonathan Perkins. During this time, he started to enjoy international performances of his musical works, and he ultimately graduated with a university prize for outstand…
Grains
4th solo disc by Swedish composer Åke Parmerud. Rerelease of 4 of his major acousmatic works. These works had been recorded in 1994 and ’96 on discs that have been sold out for many years. “Grains of Voices” (1994-95). “Jeux imaginaires” (1993). “Les objets obscurs” (1991). “Alias” (1990). Åke Parmerud has successfully pursued a professional career in contemporary music and multimedia art since the late 70s. Although he originally trained as a photographer (1972-74) he went on to study music at …
Fluides
“Mécanique des fluides” (2014-15). “PianoHertz” (2012). “Consort for Convolved Violins” (2011). “Préludes suspendus III” (2009, 10). “Fractal C” (1983-84). Horacio Vaggione has been integrating computers to his approach to composition since the 1970s. His body of work includes electroacoustic pieces, mixed pieces, and instrumental music. Born in 1943 in Argentina, Vaggione has been residing in France since 1978. He studied piano with Ornella Ballestreri and composition at Universidad Nacio…
Petites étincelles
Manuella Blackburn is an electroacoustic music composer who specializes in acousmatic music creation. However, she also has composed for instruments and electronics, laptop ensemble improvisations, and music for dance. She studied music at The University of Manchester (England, UK), followed by a Masters in Electroacoustic Composition with David Berezan. She became a member of Manchester Theatre in Sound (MANTIS) in 2006 and completed a PhD at The University of Manchester with Ricardo Clim…
Yawar Fiesta
A Spatialized Electroacoustic Opera.“Born in the Baroque period, the opera is making a strong comeback in this late-20th / early-21st century with the emergence of a new form of Baroque, the result of the globalization of information, racial and cultural melting pots, our historical knowledge of the arts, and the cohabitation of styles. This world-as-a-whole, as the synthesis of all other art forms, is a reflection of a society and an era, and it has to resemble our world through the use of mode…
Histoires d'histoire
“Music of Another Present Era” (2013-16), stereo tape. Music of Another Present Era plays freely with our ability to imagine another time and culture. At the same time, it recognizes that this historical imagining is necessarily conditioned by our own time and place. We do not know exactly what ancient music sounded like, as we are left with only inaudible details such as the microtonal scales that were used. This work appropriates a number of these ancient tuning systems to create a sense of th…
Nécropolis
“Dreaming in Darkness” (2005), “Crystal Counterpoint” (2009), “ReVoiced” (2009), “Necropolis - City of the Dead” (2011).“Dreaming in Darkness is forged primarily from small sounds, spaced apart from one another. A chime, a chink or a clunk, and then silence before a scrape or a click or a bump. It’s fragmentary, the origins of the sounds unclear. Taking the question of what a person who cannot see dreams about, Parmerud explains that the piece is an attempt to create surrealistic fragments of a …
Growl
'La vie mécanique' (2004), 'Grooves' (2011), 'Electric Birds' (2014), 'Growl!' (2014-15), 'Transmissions II' (2015).A ÂÂke Parmerud has successfully pursued a professional career in contemporary music and multimedia art since the late 70s. Although he originally trained as a photographer (1972-74) he went on to study music at the University and later at the Conservatory of Music in Göteborg (Sweden). In addition to his electroacoustic and instrumental music, his work includes a broad cross-sec…
Travaux Mecaniques
Nicolas Bernier is certainly one of the most prolific of the younger generation of electroacoustic composers. Mostly known for his performances, installations, and atmospheric music, he signs here a first album of musique concrète / acousmatics. We will again find his clever amalgam of aesthetic influences to which he has accustomed us, but in his most daring bill. A unique blend of musique concrète made of exalted ruptures (L…