The second half of Akousma’s first evening was dominated by the two female composers on the program: Estelle Schorpp and Ana Dall’Ara-Majek, preceded by Pierce Warnecke.
Lasting 21 minutes and 34 seconds, Sonopeutic Smooth Sailing by Pierce Warnecke, a Californian-born artist based in Europe, was undoubtedly the most violent piece on the program for Akousma’s first evening. The take-off is smooth, but once at high altitude, disturbances start to creep in, although some of the tools are recognizable – Akai 808/809, modular synth, generative patches that constantly reproduce certain sound patterns imagined by their creator. The rest is the result of complex, shaggy, cross-hatched and very spicy editing.
The soft frequencies become more and more intense, asperities cling to them, and you have to fasten your seat belts! Calm returns temporarily, and the initial ambience is gradually replaced by the crackling and cross-hatching of processed sound. The “plane” becomes a train hurtling through war zones. Suddenly, we’re on foot, wandering through a field of at first sparse, almost silent sound propositions. As the piece reaches the peak of its sinusoidal curve, it becomes increasingly dense, forceful, violent and downright noisy. Walking becomes an obstacle course in a Skywalker vs. Darth Vader-style laser confrontation. The game calms down fairly quickly after the peak of intensity is reached, and we can imagine some serious casualties in the narrative. Hardcore attitude in a context of high electronic expertise. Yes, violence must be expressed!
From French-born Montreal composer Ana Dall’Ara-Majek, an interplay of instrumental, electroacoustic and purely computer music was to be expected. She is interested in the sounds that microorganisms might induce, as well as those that emerge from concrete or abstract forms. Her piece Mare Buchlae, for example, evokes an underwater dive where a variety of sounds emanating from plankton are captured. However, this is an extrapolation, i.e. the recreation of an aquatic environment by means of artificial sounds generated by a modular synthesizer – Buchla 200. The story lasts 11 minutes and 53 seconds, as we find ourselves suspended in the virtual liquid, imagining that this sound environment is entirely consistent with the intentions of its creator.
Last but not least, the main course. Salima Bouaraour’s interview with Estelle Schorpp on PAN M 360 left the impression that the quality of the idea might outweigh its sensual outcome: to compose a work based on recordings of birds made in the wild over a century ago, in the age of the phonograph, hence the avian title A Conversation Between a Partially Educated Parrot and a Machine, lasting 20 minutes. The title is inspired by a quote from Eldridge Johnson, director of the famous Victor Records label at the turn of the previous century (later RCA Victor), who said of the phonograph that it “sounded like a partially educated parrot with a sore throat and a head cold”, signifying the limitations of this archaic machine.
The treatment of these archives could have turned out to be grey and clinical, but this was by no means the case. For the French-born composer and Université de Montréal professor, it was a matter of imagining a “conversation” between birdsong and recording technologies, both old and new. And no, this has nothing to do with a sound recording at the Biodôme, it’s really an immersive experience where the songs of volatile creatures, scientific rhetoric on ornithology and an artistic binder (deconstruction of avian sounds, superimpositions of textural layers, etc.) and documentary narratives create a formidable diffraction of creative materials through a sensitive and inspired discourse.
Photo Credit: Caroline Campeau
