Ned Bouhalassa

Gratte-Cité (“cityscraper”) gathers five works by Ned Bouhalassa composed between 1999 and 2005. Bouhalassa chose his material like a DJ from a large collection of city soundscape recordings, imagining a giant vinyl record whose grooves are the jagged outline of skyscrapers, played with an impossibly large needle. Electronic beats and electroacoustic soundscapes meet throughout, and most pieces were conceived in 5.1.

Urban Cuts (2005), the 34-minute centre of the album, moves through Montréal, Las Vegas and Berlin, with spoken phrases as reference points and cars always present. Commissioned by Sabine Breitsameter of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, it began as a fixed-media piece and is heard here in its mixed version with Delphine Measroch on cello, turned into a metro turnstile, a cricket or a hovercraft, Christian Olsen on drums and Fortner Anderson as narrator, recorded in Montréal in 2007.

mOrpheus (2003) follows Orpheus chasing his muse from a farm in rural Québec to the streets, zoo and train stations of Berlin, including Alexanderplatz. The Lighthouse (2005) is the soundtrack for a video by Khrystell E Burlin, the third part of her Theseus triptych, with breakbeats, horse hooves and radio whispers from an old war. Impulse (1999) uses recordings made in the basement of the National Film Board building in Montréal, with beat-driven parts added after a residency at Western Front in Vancouver, and Songe errant (2005) is a short dream-postcard.

Born in Le Mans in 1962, Bouhalassa has been part of the Montréal music scene since 1988, dividing his time between film and television scores and electroacoustic works for concert. In 2001 he sat on the music jury of Ars Electronica. The album was a Prix Opus finalist for disc of the year 2008-09.

DVD-Audio in OGplus, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 0895, 2008.