Kristoff K. Roll

Corazón Road is a single 78-minute work by the duo Kristoff K.Roll, Carole Rieussec and J-Kristoff Camps: the musical diary of a journey through Central America. Composition began in Mexico City in December 1990, and the piece was produced over almost two years in the Paris studios of Exercice de style and La muse en circuit. The duo insists it is neither an ethnological document nor a report, but the meeting of two poetic ears with people, things, landscapes and sounds caught day by day and often by chance.

The work moves through the places of the trip. Danse de Corazón Road is an invitation to travel; Aquí en Yucatán is a mosaic with a refrain and sharp contrasts; Belize City holds a sustained tension in saturated time; Guatemala is a series of independent vignettes, like the loose pages of a notebook. Two interludes, Entre deux hamacs and Sieste musicale, separate the larger sections, and Le Pacifique closes with a continuum of energy built from the memories of the whole trip, to be played very loud. Among the sound makers thanked in the booklet are the Belizean rappers, the taco sellers on the buses and the marimba players of Mérida. Dynamics and sound quality change constantly, which the duo hears as a way of expressing the poetry of reality. Producer Jean-François Denis joined to bring to an end a journey that was dragging on in the studio.

Kristoff K.Roll was formed in Paris in 1990 within the turntable septet Arènes du vinyle. Moving between acousmatics, electroacoustic improvisation, sound theatre and radio art, the duo was among those who brought the composition studio onto the stage as an instrument for live improvisation in the 1990s.

CD in Opak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 9946, 1999.