Pierre Beloüin & V/a, Awan~Siguawini~~Spemki~~~ (OS.023) CD

Description

Listen to A.C.R radio broadcast on France Culture by Frank smith & Philippe Langlois.

TOTAL TIME 69’40

1- / total 6’43 / Servovalve / Xylochrome / 6’13.
© a.d/g.p and pierre belouin, computerized in april 2006 /deep france.

Black Sifichi ~ Part 1 / 0’30 composé par Black Sifichi « In the Skin of Pierre Belouin » © Black
Sifichi spoken words, sounds and translation, p.n. Ledoux texte, recorded and writen in april 2006 / Paris

2- / total 3’55 / Rainier Lericolais / Le dpi / 2’35 composé par Rainier Lericolais
© Rainier Lericolais, enregistré a paris le 230406 / Black Sifichi ~ Part 2 / 1’20

3- / total 7’56 / Eddie Ladoire / Final street to nowhere / 6’32 composé par Eddie Ladoire
© Eddie Ladoire, recorded in april 2006 / Bordeaux / Black Sifichi ~ Part 3 / 1’24

4- / total 7’03 / Norscq / Blue Haunted Blues / 6’10
© norscq and pierre belouin, recorded in april 2006 / Mexique / Black Sifichi ~ Part 4 / 0’53

5- / total 5’55 / Sébastien Roux / The Island / 4’07 composé par Sébastien Roux
© Sébastien Roux recorded in april 2006 / Paris / Black Sifichi ~ Part 5 / 1’48

6- / total 5’33 / Nicolas Germain (el TiGeR CoMiCs GRoUP) / Entre-deux / 3’43
© gestation productiorecorded in april 2006 / Black Sifichi ~ Part 6 / 1’50

7- / total 8’21 / Cocoon / L’usine papier / 6’33 composé par Cocoon
© cocoon-Christophe Demarthe recorded in april 2006 / Paris / Black Sifichi ~ Part 7 / 1’48

8- / total 7’14 / Ultra Milkmaids / The Blue House / 4’54 composé par Ultra Milkmaids
© y.r. and pierre belouinrecorded in april 2006 / France / Black Sifichi ~ Part 8 / 2’20

9- / 7’54 / Ramuntcho Matta / Fatalement numérique composé par Ramuntcho Matta
© Ramuntcho Matta recorded in april 2006 / Paris

10- / 5’19 / Black Sifichi ~ Part 9

11- / 3’44 / Wild Shores / Hypnordic
© wild shores recorded in april 2006
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+Infinite Bonus CD-Rom ®Semuta (©Servovalve)
Inclus texte rédigé par p.n. Ledoux lu par Laurence Mouillet 4’50
© p.n. Ledoux texte, voix Laurence Mouillet enregistré à Strasbourg (Arte Studio) et rédigé à Paris (Ultralab™)
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La Semuta utilise de manière infinie et aléatoire 99 samples extraits du CD audio
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Montage sonore Wisho
Mastering Norscq
Design labomatic
Awan~Siguawini~~Spemki~~~
8 Photographies format 127 cm x 183 cm.
Estampes numériques en quadrichromie
qualité archive sur Polyétilène mat.
Accompagnées chacune d’une bande
originale sonore, écoute individuelle
au casque depuis un cd audio bouclé
dans baladeur cd.
1~ Ilot
2~~ Neons
3~~~ Lac
4~~~~ Alcan
5~~~~~ Arbre
6~~~~~~ Usine
7~~~~~~~~ Bouleaux
8~~~~~~~~ Blue house

As we disappear ever further inside the flat screens of our lives and as we lament our retreat from nature [soothed only by indulgence and expressions that close in on art] and we regret nature’s disappearance from our lives, we are compelled to resuscitate it on the screens on the backs of our eyes like we would the taped-up memories of a lost child or partner.

Multi-mediast Pierre Belouin spent a month residency in a part of Quebec where the snowflake to human being ratio is 100,000,000,000 to 1. There is only response to this awesome devastating minimal mindscape – « SNOW ! SMOKE! WIND ! SPIRIT ! » – face it and commune with it. Belouin did this by photographing his « photographies sonores » while searching for shamanic sites in the Saguenay Lac St. Jean Territory in Québec.

The audio aspect of this project is a postmodern yet earnest and deeply personal interaction with « Awan, Siguawini, Spemki » [native Abinaki for « Air / Spring / Paradise »] or the surroundings. Belouin’s landscape photographs eventually served as the entry points for such sound-makers/musicians as Servovalve and Norscq, who also had access to Belouin’s topographical ambient field recordings, to create abstract-expressionistic electronic compositions and audio speculations that seem to mirror or comment upon this magnificently sparse topography. Belouin wanted to « make a confrontation between photographs and sound, a  kind of frozen cinema. »

Meanwhile, the printed texts were written « from inside the skin of Pierre Belouin » by P.n. Ledoux, who metamorphosed into Belouin’s viral döppelganger. His diary was based on Belouin’s everyday/non-landscape photos and nothing more, ultimately allowing Ledoux to create « a kind of strange twisted fiction » that rings true. The texts are given an English-language reading by the inimitable Black Sifichi who creates an introspective Jack London imbibing absinthe with Robert Service staring out a small cold window atmosphere. Sifichi’s voice has the resonance of an old prospector who is poetically grappling with the cabin-feverish interstices of where man and machine invade, romp across, but never quite fit into the surrounding nature.

It’s a beautiful cross-cultural project, exquisite without being deathly precious, because it manages to negotiate a détente between nihilistic human and luministic topography, between the glorious desolation and a minimalist north that verily and geophysically mirrors the human quest for a state of meditation, grace, or respite – its mantra is the gusts of wind that blow under your door.

I don’t know if this project taps into a drift or tendency but psycho-geographic ambient seems to be back in a big way and better than ever, as it offers a conscientious portrait of our surroundings that borders on the meditational. This audio portrait of a region is different from nature photography and television in that it is undogmatic and fluid, and serves as an extrapolatory intimate to various Touch/Ash Int. projects such as Biosphere and Hazard’s « North » but also Hector Zazou’s compilation « Songs from the Cold Seas ». It further serves as a corollary to the sound walks and geo-ambient works of Hildegaard Westerkamp, Gabriele Proy, J.L. Drever, Justin Bennett, Peter Cusak, Dallas Simpson, Vince Hunt and Harry Stafford’s « Pure Sound – Yukon » and even KLF’s « Chill Out » and the Mystic Moods Orchestra’s « Highway One. » Since no modern visual media have managed much of a paradigm shift in our relation/understanding of our environment it is up to the abstract ethnomusicologists, sounders, sound walkers and ambient found-sound composers to nudge this shift along into being. The awe and fascination is palpable,

Bart Plantenga

For the past 20 years, bart plantenga has been producing his radio show Wreck This Mess in New York (WFMU), Paris (Radio Libertaire), and currently in Amsterdam (Radio Patapoe). Plantenga is the « nonfiction novelist » of Beer Mystic and Paris Sex Tête and  in 2004 published YODEL-AY-EE-OOOO: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World, the first-ever global history of this mysterious vocalization. He recently produced the compilation Rough Guide to Yodel. He currently lives in Amsterdam.