“While it’s possible to situate Delafontaine’s work in the traditions of musique concrète and electroacoustics, she clearly isn’t weighed down by the baggage of history.”
Sophie Delafontaine was born in Lausanne and studied in Belgium; a gifted child prodigy, she seems to have come into electroacoustic music through the medium of dance and movement. I’m quite taken by her refreshing, near-innocent approach to her work on Accord ouvert, which showcases six recent compositions. The overlapping voices (speaking and singing) on Ondiesop are absolutely enchanting, and they swim in and out of a collage which involves running water and stabs of digitally reverbed sound. Respire marche pars va-t-en began life as an observation about breathing — and made me think for two seconds we’d be getting a Pauline Oliveros-like observation — but instead it’s about the forward movement of life, which sets up a kind of swing or pendulum. What I like is the way she makes it part of her personal history; did she do the right thing in leaving Lausanne so young?
Originally published by The Sound Projector.Read the full review on The Sound Projector
