Paul Dolden

Délires de Plaisirs gathers three works by Paul Dolden, revised, remixed and remastered in his Montréal studio in 2003-04. At its centre is Entropic Twilights, a 49-minute piece in three parts that takes twilight, a time between states, as a metaphor for a period situated between millennia. Dolden chose to answer the anxiety around the turn of the millennium with a joyful work that treats popular and formal writing as equal resources.

The score ran to 140 pages and took 137 days to write. Each part was then recorded one at a time by hired musicians and singers, with every sustained part played four times; Dolden performed all the bowed and plucked string parts himself, and Phillipe Keyser recorded the drum kits one piece at a time. Distorted guitars, choirs, brass, reeds, world percussion, gamelan instruments, saucepans, metal poles and wheel rims are layered into tonal melodies, jazz grooves and rock beats. Twilight's Nomadic Desire was commissioned by ACREQ and premiered at Usine C in 2000, Twilight's Sleep by NAISA, Twilight's Ritual Incantations by Réseaux des arts médiatiques. The final 2004 version premiered at the Borderline Festival in Malmö in 2005.

Two pieces from the Resonance cycle complete the disc. The Gravity of Silence. Resonance #5 (1995), commissioned by flutist Nancy Ruffer, is played here by Chenoa Anderson, the tape changing mood and tone around a soloist who restates simple melodic ideas. For The Heart Tears itself Apart With the Power of its own Muscle. Resonance #3, premiered by the Ensemble de la SMCQ under Walter Boudreau in 1995 and heavily revised in 1997, Dolden recorded all ten string parts himself in 2002. The booklet includes an essay by John Keillor.

Born in Ottawa in 1956, Dolden started out at 16 as a professional electric guitarist, violinist and cellist before turning to recording technology as his way of composing. He has won more than twenty international awards for music that layers hundreds of recorded instrumental and vocal performances.

CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 0577, 2005.