Louis Dufort

Matériaux Composés gathers seven works by Louis Dufort composed between 2004 and 2007 in his Montréal studio and at the ZKM in Karlsruhe, all conceived for 4.1 or 5.1 channels. The album was a finalist for album of the year at the Prix Opus 2007-08.

Running through the disc is the Matério cycle, three pieces commissioned by Francisco López for the Montréal Sound Matter collective, alongside Chantal Dumas, Steve Heimbecker, Hélène Prévost and others. They treat sound matter as something organic and test it for timbre, harmony, rhythm and movement; in the third, acoustic instruments go through the same manipulations as the matter itself. They premiered at the SAT, the Fonderie Darling and the Victoriaville festival.

Grain de sable (2004-05) was under way when the December 2004 tsunami struck Phuket. The daily news footage led Dufort to the theme of drowning, approached as the dreamlike state survivors describe before losing consciousness, with a voice evoking the Siren. Enfant d'obus comes from a section for voice and tape in the opera L'archange (2005). Gen_3, dedicated to Francis Dhomont, takes a sound from his Novars along with the Schaeffer and Machaut samples Dhomont had used, carrying them into a third generation. Hi_Res (2005), a ZKM commission, is built on an excerpt from the manual of a MIDI controller read by Darren Copeland, an ironic and openly kitsch look at the technology fetish.

Born in Montréal in 1970, Dufort works across fixed media, mixed music with live processing, visual music and installation, and has collaborated with Compagnie Marie Chouinard since 1996. He teaches composition at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal and is artistic director of the Akousma festival.

DVD-Audio in OGplus, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 0893, 2008.