Kristoff K. Roll

À l’Ombre des Ondes is a set of three “audio-talking naps” by Kristoff K.Roll, the duo of Carole Rieussec and J-Kristoff Camps, realized in 2011 at their studio Les ombres d’ondes in Frontignan. The music is meant for an unusual listening situation: on headphones, lying down or on a deck chair, anywhere from a bedroom to an airport hall, with the listener drifting towards sleep. The booklet gives instructions for the setting and even for group napping around a headphone amplifier.

At the heart of each piece are dream narratives entrusted to the duo by friends: Paul-Marie Plaideau in Méridienne allongée, Francis Vadillo in Récit de rêve, and Bogumiła Busnel, Jean-Michel Espitallier and Jade Bréchelière in Méridienne inclinée. Rieussec and Camps see a kinship between dreams and concrete music, since both ignore logical causality, and the sounds follow the same free path: the sea under a galloping horse punctuated by falling nails, whispers rising from a freeway, a fly circling inside a pachinko machine. Headphones make these images feel close and physical, “an illusion machine” in their words, while voices surface and sink below the sound.

The two long pieces run close to half an hour each, divided into named episodes such as Il y a de l’ombre sur les voix or Les amoureux, le vélo, la voiture et le deltaplane, with the shorter Récit de rêve between them.

Kristoff K.Roll was formed in Paris in 1990 within the turntable septet Arènes du vinyle. The duo moves between acousmatics, electroacoustic improvisation, sound theatre, radio art and installation, and in the 1990s helped bring the electroacoustic studio onto the stage as an instrument for live improvisation.

CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 12118, 2012.