October 24th, 2023
Although he dabbled in music throughout the 1950s, eye-patched French composer Francis Dhomont (born 1926) has, since the early ’60s, devoted himself exclusively to the composition of acousmatic music, which may be thought of as a form of finely detailed sound collage. Jalons, a CD released by Montreal, Canada acousmatic label empreintes DIGITALes in 2003, is a 78-minute survey of Francis’ more recent output, spanning from 1985 to 2001. The eight tracks on this disc range in length from very short to very long, and seamlessly meld both abstract and real world sounds together with extremely deft compositional clarity and virtuosity.
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Posted by Arcane Candy
July 13th, 2008
“Dhomont is one of the key historical figures in the INA-GRM electro-acoustic scene. The main document of his work to date is a double-CD overview on INA, in association with empreintes DIGITALes in Montreal, called Mouvances / Metaphores. This new release, Frankenstein Symphony, is a hi-fidelity, speaker-ripping collage of sound utilizing material from [other] composers. It’s as energetic and forceful and disruptive as anything to emerge from this scene in years and highly recommended to anyone remotely interested in this stuff.”—Forced Exposure
“A hybrid thing in four movements, made of cut-up pieces, pasted, assembled, sowed parts that are alike and contrasted, and that I have named—for obvious reasons— the Frankenstein Symphony: an unusual electro-acoustic adventure. Armed with a scalpel and a splicing (operational) block, I sampled several morphological organs from the works of 22 composers and friends (many of whom were students of mine), and with their imprudent blessings (on a stormy night?), brought to life this little acousmatic monster, which I hold particularly close to my heart. The elements were chosen amongst the works according to their typo-morphological affinities or contrasts and with formal considerations in mind. Though I often allowed myself to play layering games, mixing works together, never did I use filtering, internal editing, transpositions or processing on the sounds. In the end, this is only a game with no other goal than to bring to light how astonishingly rich acousmatic music can be.”—Francis Dhomont
Label: Asphodel Catalog Number: ASP 0978 Format: CD Packaging: Jewel case Tracks: 4 Total Time: 63:49 Country: United States Released: 1997 Related Artists: Luc Ferrari, Bernard Parmegiani, Pierre Schaeffer More: Electro CD, Forced Exposure, MySpace, Wikipedia
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Posted by Arcane Candy