Gilles Gobeil

La Mécanique des Ruptures gathers eight works that Gilles Gobeil composed between 1985 and 1994, five on fixed medium and three with a live performer. The title comes from the branch of civil engineering that studies how materials behave on the verge of splitting, and Gobeil compares it to his own method: sound held under restraint and enormous pressure until it shatters and transforms. The cover refers to the stained glass of Bourges cathedral and to medieval stone-cutters who struck rock to hear whether it rang true.

Le vertige inconnu, realized in 1993 at the GMEB studios in Bourges and introduced by a passage from Paul Valéry, won the 1994 Stockholm Electronic Arts Award and a distinction at Prix Ars Electronica. Two works feature the ondist Suzanne Binet-Audet, recorded in a church in Boucherville in 1992. Voix blanche, which she commissioned and which is dedicated to the memory of Serge Garant, premiered in 1988 for the 60th anniversary of the ondes Martenot and took second prizes at Bourges and at the Luigi Russolo competition. In Là où vont les nuages… her instrument is linked to a MIDI converter so that she plays a whole bank of synthesizers, samplers and processing.

La ville machine, an electroacoustic drama on sound ecology with a text by Lyette Limoges, received the Grand Prize of the 1993 SOCAN Award. Associations libres sets the improvising guitarist René Lussier against dense tape scenes. Rivage confronts unretouched urban sounds with electronic ones, and Traces dates from his student years at the Université de Montréal.

Born in Sorel-Tracy, Québec, in 1954, Gilles Gobeil studied composition at the Université de Montréal with Serge Garant and was introduced to electroacoustics by Marcelle Deschênes and Francis Dhomont. His work belongs to the “cinema for the ear”, often drawing on literature and film.

CD in jewel case, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 9421, 1994.