Label: Observatoire

激シブなサウンドアートやアンビエントものを多く出しているロシアのObservatoire。INA-GRM系のJean-Claude Rissetに作曲を学びながらも、サウンドエンジニアとしての道を選んだ為非常に寡作な音楽家となったJean-Baptiste Favory。Entr'acteからの2作から3年振りに発表したカセット & CD両フォーマットによる意欲作[Voyage Immobile]。90年代初期から近作までを総括した半ばアーカイブ的な内容で、どの時代の音源もかなり完成されています。20ページのブックレット付き。



A self-portrait, sonic phantasms which reflect how I'm travelling through life... Or is it rather life which is flowing through me as I stand still?

1/ Bad tape nostalgia part I

2/ Cosmos privé

3/ Bruit mauve

4/ Le voyage immobile

5/ Bad tape nostalgia part II

TT: 54min


The wire.
Obs CD+Pbk
The third track on this new release is called “Bruit Mauve” and it takes as its inspiration Pierre Schaeffer’s 1948 Etude Violette, one of the earliest examples of musique concrète. Favory’s homage offers a denser palate, full of moves unavailable to Schaeffer during the nascent era of his experiments. Much of this new collection can be heard as a series of valiant attempts to realise the frustratingly ineffable notion that Schaeffer termed objets sonores –
sonically tangible objects to be processed in a purely acousmatic manner. The title track consists of what Favory refers to as “sound clones” – his attempts to synthetically recreate sounds encountered during a five week stay in Central Africa. Electronic insects, synthesized bird calls and quick tapping pulses invoke any number of unseen animals. This could be a travelogue-in-reverse. Acoustic instruments enter the fray in the latter half, woodwinds and percussion aiding the mimicked environment. The piece occupies the unease of its own uncanny sonic valley, recalling at times Walter Marchetti’s La Caccia. Comprising recordings from Mexico, Gabon, Italy and France, “Cosmos Privé” is described in the sleevenotes as a series of “sonic phantasms where the sound materials are less important than their entanglement”. What sound like ocean field recordings lead into a terrific forest of scraped metal, set
against bubbling electronics and scraped strings. Nostalgia occupies 30 minutes of the album. “Bad Tape Nostalgia Part 1” opens the set, and the second part closes it. “Part 1” kicks in with a stuttering collage of voices, synthesizer and percussion. And then the track almost disappears, evaporating into fog, followed by stately organ swarmed by crackles and creaks, saxophone, and recordings that could have been taken from a radio broadcast, ending with cassette hiss and the click of the tape machine. “Part 2” is more ominous, full of plodding piano and unidentifiable, flitting sounds. After a quick tape cut we encounter chanting and breathing, a slow, irregular rhythm. It drops into clattering and purring, before settling into a melancholy synthesizer phrase, tape hiss and eerie close-miked vocal gurgles against the distant clanging of metal doors. The record is an exploration of what
happens when we revisit an idea or a sound. Favory favours a constantly changing framework, applications of history help you gain a slightly firmer grasp on the implications of the past, both remembered and recorded. Like Schaeffer’s reach for the elusive objet sonore, this collection dives into a realm where memories and the moments that produced them might converse. And that’s always exciting.
Matt Krefting