Roel Meelkop - 9 (Holes In The Head) (Trente Oiseaux, 1996)

1 From How On
2 Espace Formé
3 Beweget, Bewogen USW.
4 Voor Judi
5 (Pittoresk)
6 Vergeten
7 Loch Im Kopf
8 Espace Fermé
9 Left What Where

Roel Meelkop's collection of electronic pieces follows very much in the Trente Oiseaux label tradition: very quiet pieces that avoid most kinds of traditional development, contenting themselves to present a few choice, sparse sounds. Most of the pieces here follow the same pattern of a quiet, drone-like background over which a series of sharply drawn events are scattered. The backgrounds vary significantly from piece to piece, and in appropriate listening environments, such as on headphones, present a tremendous amount of detail. On "(Pittoresk)," for example, the background is a barely controlled machine-like pulse, and on "Left What Where" it sounds like wind blowing slowly across a microphone. On a few pieces, such as "Bewegt, Bewogen Usw" and "Vergeten," the background becomes the piece, becoming accumulated in layers and slabs of sound. In a sparse environment like Meelkop's, the events become a focus of great attention. "(Pittoresk)" starts with small, electronic twinges that continue to reverberate until they combine with the pulsing background and explore into a single burst of feedback, the loudest point on the disc. Feedback also plays a significant role in "Espace Fermé," one of the most complex pieces here, where Meelkop produces a breathtaking sequence of low hums, rattles, and pops, making the listener think that the speakers have blown. A few pieces, such as "Voor Judi" and "Loch Im Kopf," have events that sound instrumental in origin, such as percussion or cello. Meelkop has been active in the European avant-garde scene since the mid-'80s, alone and in the groups Goem and THU20. This is his first solo release, although his Intransitive release, 6 (Mailcop Rules), presents a retrospective of earlier work.
Caleb Deupree, All Music Guide

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Bernhard Günter - Univers Temporel Espoir (Trente Oiseaux, 1999)

1 Un Lieu Pareil À Point Effacé, 1ere Partie 15:00
2 Un Lieu Pareil À Point Effacé, 2eme Partie 15:17
3 The Ant Moves / The Black And Yellow Carcass / A Little Closer 28:14
4 Vertige Hasard 12:01

by request

This album collects two pieces which had previously appeared on anthologies, as well as two new pieces. "Lieu Pareil, Pt. 1" was originally published on a CD distributed with the magazine Halana, and "The Ant Moves..." was released in an earlier version on the Ash International anthology. The last piece is the newest, and is one of Günter's few pieces with anything recognizable as a beat, although at the intended low volume the sound is more like a heartbeat than anything one might hear in a dance hall. There are in fact several layers of beats at different speeds, superimposed, fading in and out at different times. With a sudden loud woodblock event signaling the last section of the piece, the sounds alternate between the woodblocks and quiet static, reminiscent of the Japanese temple blocks in Stockhausen's "Telemusik." The other pieces deal with more naturalistic sounds -- wind, water, and thunder. One of the fascinations in Günter's music is his ability to recall natural phenomena without necessarily using natural sounds (although almost every sound he uses is sampled). "Lieu Pareil 2" and "The Ant Moves..." both share sectional division sounds with the last piece, but the overall sound world is quiet, non-developmental, persistent and rewarding for listeners who clear their mind and focus on the small sounds that Günter exposes.
All Music Guide

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Tomas Phillips - On Dit (Trente Oiseaux, 2003)

1 On Dit 41:04

"On Dit was created during the summer and autumn of 2002. These were my last months in the U.S. before relocating to Montreal. It was also a period of technological experimentation, as I had only recently acquired the programs with which On Dit was made. Conceptually, the piece had beenwith me for some time. The intention was to use a palette of both digital and organic sounds and to construct an extended track complete with individual though related "movements." I was aiming for a certain quietude, which I achieved in the first section, though as is often the case in art, the composition slowly developed of its own accord and became somewhat louder and more frenetic than anticipated. Perhaps the manifestation of an impending transition was escaping through the music."

This quote is the beginning of an essay that Tomas Phillips wrote about his work and that is included on the CD, as well as three of his paintings. For me On Dit constitutes a most interesting and personal choice of elements from the vocabulary of the electroacoustic music of the last decade, and combines them in a way that is both inventive and highly musical. The trajectory of the work is quite unpredictable, yet builds up to a coherent formal unity, and presents a perspective of progressing from the sometimes overly dominant paradigm of 'click and cut', 'glitch' and other purely abstract sound work towards a kind of work that embraces all the possibilities electronic tools offer today's composers.
Bernhard Günter

Tomas Phillips composed this piece in the last months before moving from his home town near the eastern seaboard of North Carolina to the city of Montreal, capturing something of the quiet life he led there, but also reflecting the inevitable tensions and excitement that must have defined the experience of leaving such a place behind. Using sounds from his environment and some newly acquired software, Phillips went to work at creating On Dit, an immersive, inventive piece where stillness and motion meet, a composition that works a strange magic on you as you listen, moving from one scene to the next through seamless transitions, building a slight tension and intensity, then falling into a quiet zone once again, mixing field recordings with electronic timbres, a minimalist's garden of sound. Found sounds are treated and manipulated, or they are left as they were recorded—the quiet sounds of chimes in the breeze. Minimal rhythms rise and fall; subtle gestures and combinations tickle the ears; a leitmotif of sound occurrences marks the progression of the piece at different intervals. On Dit is truly a journey of sound, a diary, a landscape, a self-portrait reflecting a particular moment in time, a location in space, a state of being. The CD also contains data files for viewing on your home computer — three paintings and an insightful essay on the composition of the piece, its themes and, more generally, on the experience of listening.
Incursion Music

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Reynols - Blank Tapes (Trente Oiseaux, 2000)

1 Untitled 3:32
2 Untitled 10:59
3 Untitled 11:06
4 Untitled 10:08
5 Untitled 6:22
6 Untitled 8:28

Explorations in silence and electrostatic sounds from this Argentinian trio consisting of Miguel Tomasin, Roberto Conlazo and Anla Courtis. Six tracks "made only with analog and digital processings over selected blank tapes dating from 1978 to 1999". The first piece consists of barely audible hiss, with only slight variations. This is the most "blank" of all the tapes presented here. The second piece builds on the same foundation as the first, but quickly becomes much more audible with high pitched hiss and whistling. The third piece flutters comfortably at a low volume (very nice!), while the fourth begins in silence and slides in and out with variations in tape hiss. The fifth piece startled me out of my complacency with its more intrusive sound barrage, and the sixth returns again to subtler shifts and variations. Of course, descriptions of these pieces are a far cry from being an adequate response to this recording. It's the total experience of listening to this disc that really matters, and requires an account that is less descriptive and more impressionistic. The tabula rasa that is the foundation for each of these pieces is a medium we are all familiar with. The way Reynolds builds on this foundation is remarkable - sometimes barely noticeable and at others unmistakable and startling. As an aside, I recently became aware that they are performing some live shows in Argentina. I wonder what a performance by these artists would be like? Blank Tapes is an excellent addition to the Trente Oiseaux catalogue, worthy of much attention, that should be welcomed the world over by fans of this label's activities.
Incursions

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Bernhard Günter - Slow Gestures / Cérémonie Désir (For Heike) (Trente Oiseaux, 1999)

1 Untitled (23:15)

It is very difficult for me to speak of this work, since it is getting very close to my goal of creating a kind of language free space. I thus prefer to let it go without further comment other than that I dedicate it to my companion Heike - each gesture is both speaking of her, and speaking to her, without words.
Bernhard Günter

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Bernhard Günter - Un Peu de Neige Salie (Trente Oiseaux, 1993 (2003 remastered reissue))

1 Untitled I/92 (8:59)
2 Whiteout (27:00)
3 Untitled IV/92 (16:00)
4 Untitled I/93 (20:12)

...Un peu de neige salie est à cet égard absolument remarquable. Véritable haïku sonore, ce grand disque est d’abord une profonde respiration. Pas une respiration comme les miment les mauvais disques « new age ». Mais de ces respirations que seules les maisons, en hiver, savent imposer à leurs habitants. Une respiration comme un chat qui rode, un chat qui se ferait les griffes sur une moquette usagée, un chat qui guette, affolé par des sons inaudibles à son maître. Une respiration qui se prolonge infiniment dans le silence suspendu. Un peu de neige salie est l’héritage d’un homme qui a renoncé à l’histoire, et plus encore, au temps qui passe. Mais pas seulement. Cette musique est le don d’un homme qui a renoncé à tout. L’auteur lui-même a longtemps expliqué que sa musique se définissait par tout ce qu’il en avait exclu. Réductionniste dirent même certains critiques tellement contents de trouver un nouveau mot en « isme ». Mais ce qui importe c’est que ce faisant Bernard Günter élevait son art au besoin de transcendance qui était le nôtre. Les grands vides peints sous nos yeux étaient tout ce qui nous avait manqué jusqu’alors. Les plus blasés (Dieu qu’il y en a !) y verraient quelque chose de proche, dans la forme, des tapisseries sonores d’Eno et de sa musique discrète. Mais la posture n’est pas la même. Moins conceptuelle, plus poétique, Un peu de neige salie ne vise pas à superposer une nouvelle strate sonore sur l’océan de sons qu’est devenu le monde. Elle est tout autre chose. Elle est une invitation. Une promesse (elle aussi convaincante) d’un accord possible entre soi et le bruit du monde.
laptitemaison

This release is a special re-edition of my first CD on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of it's first release in 1983. It is not identical to the original version of Un Peu de Neige Salie, but entirely re-mastered using newly acquired digital tools, resulting in more clarity, a better spatial image, and elimination of background and quantizing noises i had no means to get rid of before. The new mastering sheds a quite different on these works i still consider valid artistic statement after ten years have passed. The tracks Untitled II/92 and Untitled III/92 have been replaced by a soundtrack i created for the video project Whiteout of Tokyo based artist Takahiro Tanaka that combines the two original tracks into one larger work, reinforcing the unity of Un Peu de Neige as a whole. I have kept Takahiro's title Whiteout and dedicated the piece to him. The re-edition is completed by extensive liner notes and a collection of photos that i find to somehow relate to Un Peu de Neige Salie (though maybe more by their 'feel' than by their content).
Trente Oiseaux

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