Wednesday 6 August 2008

new releases of note: Davis, Milton & Saade + La Casa & Peyronnet

Matt Davis, Matt Milton & Bechir Saade - 'dun' (another timbre)

Exquisite music by a trio described in The Wire as “three young musicians re-inventing improvised music”. Matt Davis and Bechir Saade, who are quietly building reputations for themselves as two of the rising stars of the improv world, are joined by newcomer Matt Milton whose quiet, careful violin playing underpins these three beautiful pieces.
“A world in which silence, or near silence, is as important as producing a sound…. One that unfolds its beauty in a peaceful way.”
- Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly

Eric La Casa & Cedric Peyronnet - 'La Creuse' (Herbal records)

'Our project is defined by its aim: to represent in sonic terms, and in duo, a particular environment – a triangular area in the north of the Creuse département in central France. In the first place, based on cartographic representations, we set about breaking down the chosen territory, an area between the Petite Creuse and Grande Creuse rivers, into specific sites. Secondly, we placed the map ‘under surveillance’, as it were, conducting sonic surveys in the selected sites. These surveys led us to a geophonic approach, each based on a development of specific auscultatory techniques, in which the wealth of sounds collected nourished our research into (sonic) territoriality. The aim of the project was not to replace image with sound but to give that which surrounds us a (sonic) body; to give landscape a sonic corporeality. It might be that, being unrelated to notions of admiration that go hand in hand with seeing, a sonic evaluation can go some way towards confounding our a priori notions of landscape. Thirdly, the resulting data gave rise to an ensemble of exchanges/interactions, enabling formal variations. For one of these formalisations, musical composition, we chose the following protocol: each site was given a musical interpretation by a composer, his work being based on the site’s specific sound-bank. The composer then sent his piece to a second who, with recourse to his own bank of sounds, responded to the first interpretation. The second composer redefined the composition, adding his own sounds also. The final interpretation, therefore, is based as much on the layered listenings and recordings formed at the site itself as the musical conceptions of each individual'

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