Montreal-based James O’Callaghan confirms his position as a world-class composer with the release of Espaces tautologiques, his first album on the Empreintes Digitales label. Composed between 2011 and 2015, the four acousmatic pieces on this fifty-minute recording are further proof of O’Callaghan’s remarkable technical proficiency and virtuosity. Sounds are at war, ferociously whizzing from speakerContinue reading “James O’Callaghan. Espaces tautologiques.”
Genre Archives
James O’Callaghan’s Bodies-Soundings
James O’Callaghan’s Bodies-Soundings, winner of Musicworks’ 2014 Electronic Music Composition contest, is a highly suspenseful acousmatic piece in which sounds are partially diffused through tactile transducers (specialized speakers that transmit sound through any object to which they’re attached) that are attached to an acoustic guitar and a toy piano. The two instruments are not playedContinue reading “James O’Callaghan’s Bodies-Soundings”
Fleshtone Aura. On Rusticated Slant.
Similarly to his other group, Gastric Female Reflex, Andrew Zukerman’s Fleshtone Aura project is an act of cheeky historical revisionism. Evoking the rubbery tactile sonics of musique concrète through jump-cuts and slippery tape-speed bends, Zukerman’s pieces are also littered with delightfully psychedelic humour. Side one of this twelve-inch 45rpm vinyl disc begins with pieced-together microscopicContinue reading “Fleshtone Aura. On Rusticated Slant.”
Christian Bouchard. Automacité.
Automacité is firmly rooted in two sound worlds: Bouchard’s gestural language speaks of Montreal’s vital acousmatic scene, and the album’s silvery abstract dynamism recalls the later work of so-called IDM (intelligent dance music) pioneers Autechre. Attracted to robust impacts, acute pin pricks of sound, and jittery crawls across glistening aural surfaces, Bouchard still creates theContinue reading “Christian Bouchard. Automacité.”