Blogue

1 juin 2000
Par Carlos M Pozo in Angbase (ÉU), 1 juin 2000

Texte

«An excellently presented disc on a promising new label.»

The quote on the inside of the elegantly designed digipack informs us: “the source material for this record consists of various field recordings of my mouth, as well as audio documentation of having a microphone in my mouth while sleeping in front of my apartment building.” Anyone who’s turned on a recorder, walked away, and later listened to the results knows that the resulting sounds have more to do with tape hiss, ambient hum, and electrical interference than with any earth-shakingly weird aural phenomena one might have wished to capture on tape. From these building blocks St-Onge crafts some rough and beautiful pieces of mysterious and very visual scrapes and groans. Track 2 is 6 tense minutes of waiting for something to happen, as the listener sinks in a static sound field of low volume mic rumbles and what is possibly the sound of the tape recorder’s motor. This track could be nothing but what it is - a mic in someone’s mouth. The kicker to track 2 is that if you make it to the final minute, the tape is cut off abruptly, and something actually does happen: a voice pops out, speaking (Russian?) clearly and calmly for a few seconds. There is obviously an artist’s hand at work here, as each piece is crafted into textures that transform the basic scratchy whirling hisses into a fairly unique set of sound works. An excellently presented disc on a promising new label.

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