 |
|
"33 RPM: Ten Hours of Sound from France"
Joining Ju-Jikan: Ten Hours Of Sound From Japan and Variable Resistance: Ten Hours of Sound From Australia, 33 RPM is the companion disc to the newest installment in an ongoing sound art exhibition series at SFMOMA. "Ten Hours" is part of the exhibition title and does not refer to the amount of music on this disc, which is a full length, non-mp3 sampler of different artists from the show. Like its predecessors, 33 RPM (thankfully) does not attempt a survey of its particular country's experimental music history, instead focusing largely on newer artists with a few older luminaries included for comparison and continuity.23Five
This approach is especially welcome here, as France, unlike Japan and Australia, has a widely-documented and much-publicized history of experimental sound craft, largely a result of government-funded arts institutions such as INA GRM, one of the world's most significant sources for electroacoustic music and the incubator for Schaeffer and Henry's pioneering studies in musique concrète. 33 RPM covers a large amount of ground, touching, albeit briefly, on a wide variety of today's sound art techniques. Former Art Zoyd member and art-rock orchestrator Kasper T. Toeplitz opens the disc with uncharacteristically noisy contribution, a whirlpool of crunchy static and shredded high frequencies that would've been at home on Ju-Jikan, alongside Masonna and Merzbow. Long-standing electroacoustic duo Kristoff K. Roll provide a track more in line with their exceptional past work, "Zócalo masqué" is a fascinating snippet of audio travelogue, splicing layered machine noises with recordings from a Mexican political gathering, in preciously-detailed collage. 33 RPM's biggest name belongs to Jean-Claude Risset, a student of Boulez and one of the fathers of early computer music; however, his three-part "Resonant Sound Spaces" piece pales in comparison to Lionel Marchetti's "À rebours," which develops out of similar acousmatic sound, sourced from strings and woodwinds, cut and reattached in a slowly sinister build that makes one of the disc's best moments. Other highlights include Christophe Havel's "excerpt/metamorphosis," a pointed sculpture of machine ambience and assorted bodily noises that showcases the effect of advancing computer technologies on musique concrète technique. The capabilities of new technology are certainly manifest in exhibit curator "Laurent Dailleau's processed theremin work "It Was Too Dark to Hear Anything," the instrument dropping a vast, aquatic drone, as spacious and effective as any of the artist's work as a member of improvisers Le Complexe de la Viande. 33 RPM closes with a track from ambient techno/industrialist Mimetic that feels somewhat out of place among so much sound art, though some intriguing similarities can be established between the song's apocalyptic swoon and the work of sympathizers like Art Zoyd et al. Taken as a whole, the compilation is a strong collection of some of today's most interesting French electronic musicians and one that makes steps toward connecting these artists with their rich heritage. If anything, 33 RPM, like Ju-Jiken and Variable Resistance, will provide listeners with many fruitful introductions, new and old, surely enough to stay busy until the next installment. 
- Kristoff K. Roll - Zócalo masqué
- Lionel Marchetti - À rebours
- Christophe Havel - excerpt/metamorphosis
