Monday, March 19, 2007

Francis Dhomont-Sous le regard d’un soleil noir ,LP/CD,1982/1995,France


Francis Dhomont (born Paris, France, 2 November 1926) is a French composer of Electroacoustic / Acousmatic music.
He studied composition under Ginette Waldmeier, Charles Koechlin and Nadia Boulanger. In the late 1940s he intuitively discovered with magnetic wire what Pierre Schaeffer at about the same time came to call musique concrète, consequently conducting solitary experiments with the musical possibilities of sound recording.
In 1963 he decided to dedicate his time to electroacoustic composition utilising natural sounds. Performances in public of his music are done using the French "diffusion" technique over multiple loudspeakers. His work consists exclusively of tape pieces using natural, or "found" sounds, exploring morphological interplay and the ambiguities between sound and the images it may create.
Dhomont's work has won many international awards including at the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition (France), the Magisterium Prize in 1988, Prix Ars Electronica in 1992 (Linz, Austria) and others. In 1997, as the winner of the Canada Council for the Arts' Lynch-Staunton Prize, he was supported by the DAAD for a residence in Berlin. He was recently awarded a prestigious career grant by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec . Dhomont is the editor of several electroacoustic music journals, and has produced many radio programs for Radio-Canada and Radio-France.
From 1978 to 2005, he divided his time between France and Québec, where he taught at the Université de Montréal from 1980 to 1996. He was a founding member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. He now lives in Avignon (France) and regularly presents his works in France and abroad. A great traveller, he frequently participates in juries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Dhomont
In Sous le regard d’un soleil noir, Mr. Dhomont creates an enigmatic and dreamlike atmosphere, with the subject matter centered on the self. The drama is built up as the barrier crumbles between the self and the external world. The inner being is then invaded, or better, sucked into the black hole of schizophrenia: “One is inside then outside what one has been inside. One feels empty […] to eat and to be eaten to have the outside inside and to be inside the outside. But this is not enough […] and inside oneself there is still nothing.”
This is the worrying black sunrise, as torrid as the intensity of the drama it engenders. The drama takes many forms in the work. Among others, there is an obsessive pitch, B, whose timbre serves to express a searing anguish. There is also the breakdown of the self, evoked in the Engloutissement (“Engulfment”) of Section 2 by the immersion in fluid sonorities that are driven on to an asphyxiation of the personality, until only an inarticulate shadow remains at the bottom of the abyss. Then there is the Implosion of Section 4, and the progressive Pιtrification of the personality in Section 7. The first sound of Citadelle intιrieure (“Interior Fortress”), a heavy door that suddenly slams shut symholizes the walled-in isolation of the personality. Finally, there is the vocal counterpoint at the end of the same section, spread out in space as if this distant voice, fragile and almost inaudible, symbolizes the loss of contact between the self of the individual and the consciousness of its own existence.
http://www.electrocd.com/cat.e/imed_9633.prs.html
get it here

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

[1] la réalité étrangère - menaces. le moi incarcéré. une solitude peuplée d’ombres. 1ères variations sur la note si. apparition des ‘éléments-charnières’. effondrements | [2] engloutissement - 1er délire. intrusion de l’extérieur. le déni. mère/mer: enfouissement liquide, repli, anfractuosités, abysses. jeu rythmique (pulsation large) sur le flux et reflux (respiration?) | [3] arrête! arrête! elle me tue - angoisse de la disparition: l’inexistence. hallucinations. destruction de soi. jeu rythmique (pulsation serrée). intermodulations de chaînes. contrastes énergétiques. crescendo polyphonique | [4] implosion - la réalité persécutrice. envahissement et oppression. repliement. nouvelles variations sur si, paramètre ‘bloqué’. modulation dynamique de matières multiples par le piano (annoncé au début de la section précédente et confirmé dans la suivante)| [5] le moi divisé - clivage, fragmentation, fracture, fissure, fêlure. double-sens. écartelement du si en ‘clusters’ resserrés. matières foisonnantes, polyphoniques. piano-tournoiement | [6] citadelle intérieure - la réalité niée. distorsion de l’ailleurs. terreur glacée. le labyrinthe souterrain. ‘ici’ et ‘là’. amplification des éléments-charnières. sons anecdotiques. fausses boucles: répétitions infidèles. accentuation agressive des zones aiguës du spectre | [7] pétrification - catatonie: «il n’y a plus qu’un vide là où il y a eu quelque temps une personne» — ronald d laing, le moi divisé ‘invention’ sur les sections précédentes. récapitulation achronologique des moments forts, mais dégradés, anamorphosés, rayés. traces de wozzeck. superposition de durées en progressions décroissantes | [8] le message quand vient le soir - «là personne ne pénètre, même pas avec le message d’un mort. mais toi, tu es assis à ta fenêtre et, dans ton rêve, tu appelles le message quand vient le soir» — kafka, un message impérial. retour de séquences, figures et objets des sections 1 et 2 dans des relations différentes: perspectives d’écoute modifiées

Anonymous said...

This one was a wonder from front to back. Still baffles me how "they" all "do it". A mysterious and alien sounding album.