Richard Chartier

* Edition of 200 * With his new album “Continue” Richard Chartier presents four minimalist compositions with a focus on deep drones and apparent silences. The music is subtle, delicate and at moments fragile. Full, with details, like delicate patterns that unfold like ripples on water.

With a keen eye on details the compositions reflect Chartier’s earlier work, but also asks new questions. When is the creative process done? Is art ever finished or does it continue to develop? And how does the listener participate in this? Will they give it full attention using a headphone to hear the smallest detail, or will it be played in the background? How will they perceive the work?

Richard Chartier’s words on Continue: "Over the past few years I’ve been revisiting materials for several long form works: recomposing, restructuring, re-editing, re-evaluating…until they started to break down into separate pieces and segments. All the while I wonder for each, “Is this done? Is this complete? Why can I not allow this to be finished?” and what is it that draws me back into them. What determines the completion of sound, of composition, of experience? What determines when it fades—when it’s pressed onto a substrate? One of the most constant forces in our lives, the sun, is always shifting, undulating, sending forth energy. To us on the ground, it might look basically the same every day, but we don’t notice the subtle changes to its surface. It has no true completion of form. Upon release, I wonder if these are completed forms. I already feel I need to rework them. Aren’t we unfinished forms, too? Even the forms of recorded aural experience continue to shift as the listener re-interprets and re-contextualizes them in their environments and playback. The four movements on ‘Continue’ present four variations on the idea of completion".