Ana Dall’Ara-Majek

Radiolaria is a cycle of eight electroacoustic pieces by Ana Dall’Ara-Majek, made from improvisations she recorded on the Buchla 200, the 1970s modular synthesizer, during a residency at the Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm in the summer of 2022. She shaped them in 2023 at Studio Blue Spider in Montréal. The subject is plankton, the drifting mass of microscopic and larger species carried by ocean currents: each piece highlights one species, with others audible in the background, and the studio’s AKG BX20 spring reverb stands in for waves and currents.

The overture, Mare Buchlae, moves from ocean field recordings to an underwater world made only of synthesis. Three Improvisus B200 pieces keep the order of the original multitrack improvisations largely intact, drawing on the clicks of crustaceans and bivalves, a mass of plankton thrown about by a wave, and the low beating of “drumming” fish. Perpetuum spirae starts from the silica skeletons of radiolarians, some of which, as Ernst Haeckel documented, contain smaller copies of themselves: a Buchla sequence is laid over transposed versions of itself until mineral, clinking sounds appear.

Parasiti fluxique gives a voice to tiny larvae, slimy micro-sounds that grow denser while industrial fishing can be heard around them. Canticum asphodeli imagines diatom blooms seen from a space station, in long continuous bands of pure waves named after the Asphodel Meadows of the Greek underworld. Ostinato micromacro closes the cycle with a slow, minimal ostinato for billions of years of planktonic evolution.

Born in Paris in 1980 and based in Montréal, Dall’Ara-Majek studied with Christine Groult and Philippe Leroux in France and with Robert Normandeau in Québec, earning a doctorate from the Université de Montréal in 2016. She also performs as a thereminist and electronic musician with Ensemble ILÉA and other groups.

CD-R edition in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 24190, 2024.