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===== Zbigniew Karkowski & Julien Ottavi - Double Live Bitche ===== **(Fibrr027)** {{:doublelivebitche.jpg?400|}} Unreleased materials by Zbigniew Karkowski & Julien Ottavi recorded live in Les Ateliers de Bitche in Nantes in May and Septembre 2012. This release holds special significance, marking a decade since the passing of our dear friend Zbigniew Karkowski. It stands as a poignant tribute to the memories of the incredible moments we shared and the powerful music we created together. Zbigniew Karkowski - laptop Julien Ottavi - Laptop ===== Ghost String Quartet - La terre du d​é​luge ===== **(Fibrr026)** {{:ghoststringalbumcoverk7.png?400|}} Is there a composer in the room? for String Quartet A music that disappear, a string quartet that play non-stop during one week, repetition of repetition learning from their own mistakes. This is an edit of the entire process. Composition for AI and string quartet by Julien Ottavi ===== Blast Of Silence - Julien Ottavi & Kasper T. Toeplitz - Blast 23 ===== **(Fibrr025)** {{:coverblast23.jpg?400|}} Face-melting noise session from a pair of seasoned French agitants, Julien Ottavi and Kasperr T. Toeplitz. Second album for this powernoise duo, both musicians and comopsers are using computers for making their harsh noise specia! Julien Ottavi - Digital Noise Kasper T. Toeplitz - Digital noise Recorded June 10 & 11 2022 at Ateliers de Bitche, Nantes - France. Mixed summer 2022, Sleaze Art Studio, Paris. Order the album here: https://fibrrrecords.bandcamp.com/album/blast-23 (only on CD) {{:double1.jpg?400|}} ===== ARME / Rhys Trimble / Wolframite - un dictionnaire de d​é​esses ===== **(Fibrr024)** {{:cover_arme_trimble_wolframite.jpg?400|}} Composed, arranged and performed on a three-day session by Rhys Trimble, AntiRock Missile Ensemble (ARME) and Wolframite at les Ateliers de Bitche, Nantes, Nov 2022. Line up for this recording: Benjamin Bourdel - synth, percussion, vocals Jean Grimault - drums Julien Ottavi - bass, vocals Francesco Petetta - bass, percussion, quickstep kalimba, tapes Jenny Pickett - guitar Philippe Simon - guitar Anthony Taillard - guitar Rhys Trimble - vocals lyrics, effects Gabriel Vogel - drums A project by Le Filtre à sons et Apo33 Released on Fibrr Records credits released April 21, 2023 Recorded live and mixed by Julien Ottavi Artwork: Rhys Trimble Graphic layout: Allison Cadoret ===== Radio Noise Collective - Extended Stereo ===== **(Fibrr023)** {{:cover_radionoisecollective_cd.jpg?400|}} Radio as radiophonic object, its use, its extensions, its culture and its possibilities form the subject matter and the field of action of radio. Several musicians and non-musicians exploit the rich sound of this transmitter, capable of speaking all languages, playing all types of music, and which therefore represents an inexhaustible source of sounds and information. Here multiplied, the radio becomes an abundant sound language, an instrument of transversal interaction. The situation here is reversed: radio is no longer a medium, the means of broadcasting a sound material which is foreign to it. It is the source of a new musical meaning, and it is the music itself of its intended broadcast that becomes parasitic. Radio Noise Collective is a project proposed by Apo33 to perform with Radio receivers and everyday cracked electronics. ===== GIASO - Parallel Entities ===== **(UsbKey3)** GREAT INTERNATIONAL AUDIO STREAMING ORCHESTRA An online cross-border orchestra developed by APO33 for the purpose of creating networked performance spaces. {{:album_cover_web.jpg?400|}} The album online is an extract of the 12 hours performance available on the USB Key album. The Great international Audio Streaming Orchestra uses Icestream to perform and mix different audio streams. In the performance space the streams are then composed through a spatialization creating a free-multi-directional net-radio system. GIASO performs with new ways for orchestra composition where the composer becomes a virtual entity that emerges from a community of audio explorers/nodes. This orchestra is an online project using live real-time audio transmissions via the internet to create originals compositions where the musicians are spread around the globe. GIASO is a project that creates new relations and aesthetic in music by using the network as its main tool for the transmition and arrangement of the varying oeuvres of participating musicians. The orchestra becomes at once virtual and physical, the ensemble is recomposed within a space, the concerts social relation takes place in another dimension, musician and audience gathered together through the live broadcasts and via a chat system where people exchange about what is happening in the music or how to change the dynamic, the volume, the timbre aspect or anything related to the music. Musicians on this album : Shelly Knotts Jenny Pickett Philippe Cavaleri Julien Ottavi Eric Wong Seamus O’Donnell Amble Skuse Paola Torres Núñez del Prado Robin Plastre William Nurdin Keiko Uenishi ===== ARME - Curious Fantasy ===== **(Fibrr022)** {{::arme_curious_fantasy_cover.jpg?400|}} ARME is Anti-Rock Missile Ensemble A post Rock noise Symphonic band. Members for this album are: Jenny Pickett: Guitar Gabriel Vogel: Drums Jean Grimault: Drums Fryderik Lexpert: Guitar Anthony Taillard: Guitar Robin Plastre: Bass Julien Ottavi: Bass-guitare Recorded at Les Ateliers de Bitche - November 2020 Mixing and mastering at BruitBrutStudio - October 2022 Supported by Apo33 ===== HARSH NOISE CONSORTIUM - Bruital Automaton ===== **(Fibrr021)** {{:harshnoiseconsortium_cover.jpg?400|}} HARSH NOISE CONSORTIUM Manifesto for AN AUTOMATICHARSHNOISEWALL: NO RECORDED NOISE ONLY NOISE MADE LIVE BY MACHINE NO HUMAN COMPOSITION NO AUTHORSHIP NO COPYRIGHT ===== SOLAR RETURN - Salt (Sounds from the cosmos) ===== **(Fibrr020)** {{:solarreturn_salt_soundsfromthecosmos_cover_bandcamp.jpg?400|}}
VLF (very low frequency) recordings made from 2014 to 2018 in Danemark and France. Made in the right condition VLF antenna could catch electromagnetic storm from the stratosphere. Those recordings are part of Open Recordings collection on Fibrr Records ===== FORMANEX - 20 Years Of Experimental Music ===== WITH AMM, CHRISTIAN WOLFF, KEITH ROWE, RALF WEHOWSKY, JOHN TILBURY, PHILL NIBLOCK, ONSEMBLE, SETH CLUETT, RADU MALFATTI, MICHAEL PISARO, JULIEN OTTAVI, KASPER T. TOEPLITZ
{{:mikroton_cd_76_85_cover-512x457.png?350|}} Nantes trio Formanex celebrates 20 years of activism in experimental music with a 10 CD edition full of amazing collaborations with ONsemble (contemporary music group from Nantes and Saint-Nazaire) and composers they have worked with. The box set includes early works by Formanex’s own Julien Ottavi, unique compositions created by Keith Rowe, pieces by Kasper T. Toeplitz, Ralf Wehowsky, Seth Cluett, Michael Pisaro, Radu Malfatti, as well as other giants of contemporary music from the last 50 years; such as Phill Niblock and Christian Wolff. A rare collection of CDs, this box set represents a broad vision of experimental music from noise to electronic abstract composition, radical minimalism, contemporary and improvised music. Limited Edition of 200 copies. **CD 1** AMM / Formanex / ONsemble 1. AMM / Formanex Play  Treatise by Cornelius Cardew 2. AMM / Formanex / ONsemble  Play Treatise (p. 46-47)  by Cornelius Cardew **CD 2** Formanex / ONsemble / Christian Wolff / Keith Rowe / John Tilbury 1. Two Pianos by Christian Wolff 2. Edges by Christian Wolff 3. Trio Rowe / Wolff / Tilbury **CD 3** Formanex / ONsemble / Christian Wolff / Keith Rowe / John Tilbury 1. For 1, 2, 3 People by Christian Wolff 2. Looking North by Christian Wolff 3. Edges by Christian Wolff 4. Trio Rowe / Wolff / Tilbury **CD 4** Formanex / ONsemble / Phill Niblock 1. Disseminate 2. To Two Tea Roses **CD 5** Formanex / ONsemble / Keith Rowe 1. Hang Ups **CD 6** Formanex / Ralf Wehowsky 1. Untitled 1 2. Untitled 2 3. Untitled 3 **CD 7** Formanex / Keith Rowe 1. Three Lines To Achieve Almost Nothing **CD 8** Formanex Early Works 1. S/T 2. Soulevement 3. Le Langage Du Thé 4. Chercher Le 2eme Oeil **CD 9** Formanex / Kasper T. Toeplitz 1. Szkic 2. Demonology #11 **CD 10** Formanex / ONsemble / Radu Malfatti / Michael Pisaro / Seth Cluett 1. Fragile Being, Hopeful Becoming by Michael Pisaro 2. For Formanex by Seth Cluett 3. Shoguu by Radu Malfatti CATALOG: mikroton cd 76-85 ˚ fibrrx01 FORMAT: CD EDITION: 300 RELEASE: October 12, 2019 A co-production of Apo33, Formanex, Fibrr Records and Mikroton Recordings Produced by Apo33 and Formanex Compiled by Julien Ottavi Executive producer and designer: Kurt Liedwart Texts: Brian Olewnick, Keith Rowe, Julien Ottavi Photos: Apo33 ===== JULIEN OTTAVI - Beyond Symphony (Noise Serie) ===== **(Fibrr0019)** Composed and played in 2018 by Julien Ottavi with Computer and Puredata. Long time work composition serie based on programmatic composition with limited instruments, noise generator only for this one.
===== SNOW CRASH - JULIEN OTTAVI / JOACHIM MONTESSUIS - LP (Vinyl) ===== **(FHS002)** Confiné dans le cosmos, les mutliples facettes d’un même chant résonne dans les corps vibrants des cordes, il en émerge une supernova crachant des flammes de mondes invisibles. Snow Crash est le point de croisement ultime de deux performeurs poètes de l’extrême, chanteurs transes modernes alliant voodoo noise, ultra puissance sonore, déflagration de cris et de langues extatiques, incantation rocailleuse et possession granulaire. Une conjuration, un bruit profond, un canal d’énergie.
===== MASSACRE - EXTRASYSTOLE / THENOISER ===== Shoï Extrasystole and Julien Ottavi collaboration in industrial, noise, electronic, minimal, and concrete glitches. ===== JULIEN OTTAVI - Secrets Telluriques (Fibrr0018) ===== Solo for Symphonic Tamtam {{:secretstelluriques.jpg?350|}}
===== SOLAR RETURN - 2Rats&4Stars (NoiZ002) ===== {{:solar-return-cover.jpg?200|}} Nantes based artists Jenny Pickett and Julien Ottavi created Solar Return in 2009. Taking electromagnetic phenomena as a starting point for their audio creations. They have produced various scores for dual audio synths/oscillators/DIY electronics etc...which reflect patterns and electromagnetic events such as solar flares and inner city mobile phone mast end as well as the unfathomable audio world of kitchen appliances. Through their performances the duo tunnel deep into the world of frequency, static and sound as a physical experience. ===== KK Null - The Noiser - Bruital Orgasme LP (vinyl) ===== //Kazuyuki Kishino, Julien Ottavi, Nath & Fil Cavaleri// **(FHS001)** {{:a3869503837_10.jpg?300|}}
===== ELECTROMAGNETIC COLLECTIVE ===== JENNY PICKETT & JULIEN OTTAVI **(FIBRR017)** {{:fibrr017electromagnetic.jpg?200 |}} “sound of electricity” Recorded between march 2012 and june 2014, in France and UK. (Double CD) Sound in Nature is a vast field of exploration, from underwater sounds to stratospheric electromagnetic storm interferences, we do find some amazing beautiful vibrational resonances out there. Beyond the classical annoying hum, others layers of sound developed, which could be considered artefacts and we could hear slight movement within the frequencies with regularity, as if the electricity were somehow containing its own chanson. Listening back to these recordings without using any manipulation of any kind in the studio, we discovered a musical complexity, a certain beauty in its horror, touching the very deep and subconscious listening to our everyday environment.
[[pressElectromagnetic]] ===== Goh Lee Kwang | Julien Ottavi: Pukul Berapa ===== **(FIBRR016)** {{:glk_jottavi.jpg?200|}} 1. Berapa In Loop 2. Extra 3. Out Of Berapa 4. Pukul 1 5. Pukul 2 6. Pukul 3 Recorded in Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia and Nantes - France - between January and May 2015. Mastering BruitBrutStudio - Nantes, France. Creative Commons A-share a like international 2015 Goh Lee Kwang - no input mixing board Julien Ottavi - TamTam (gong), Bass Drum and computer (Puredata and Apodio10) Goh Lee Kwang http://www.gohleekwang.bandcamp.com | http://www.herbalinternational.blogspot.com Julien Ottavi http://www.noiser.org
===== zbigniew karkowski, "unreleased materials" ===== **(FIBRR015)** {{:cover:cdkarkowski.jpg|}} This is our hommage to a great musician (1958 - 2013). A CD full of music, that had been never published, Karkowski made with different musicians around the globe. Not only 'a piece in memory of' but some real music played with him! Get yourself a glass of some good wine and blast your head off with this! In Karkowski's spirit ! Cheers man !! With Daniel Buess, Sin:Ned, Lars Akerlund, Julien Ottavi, Ilios and Kasper T. Toeplitz.
===== GIASO - "Great Internet Audio Orchestra” ===== **(FIBRR014)** {{:cover:giasocd.jpg|}} An international online orchestra developed by APO33 whose goal is to create a place for networked performance. “Great International Audio Streaming Orchestra” uses a bidirectional multiplex platform to perform and mix different audio sources via streaming. Over the time of the performance, streams (web-transmission) are re-made ​​in the ‘local’ space using a system based on mixing multiple audio-streams through a spatial diffusion. GIASO creates a distributed orchestra, where musicians and composers can become virtual entities that emerge from a global community of nodes – audio explorers and performers’ networks. With Cdrik Croll, Jenny Pickett, Kadet Kuhne, Romain Papion, Ryo Ikeshiro, Shoï Extrasystole, William Nurdin, Emmanuelle Gibello, Eva Ursprung, Philippe Cavaleri, Julien Ottavi, Shelly Knotts, Joachim Montessuis, Erin Sexton, Brice Jeannin, Elpueblodelchina, Seamus O'Donnell
===== OPENSOUND - "V/A” ===== **(FIBRR013)** {{:cover:opensound_cd_cover.jpg|}} Apo33 Collective, Solar Return, Audiolab, Goodgod, NK, Granular, J Milo Taylor, Piksel, School for Cadavers, UKI, Yaseen Taylor Cahen BUY ===== pizMO - "blst” ===== **(FIBRR012)** {{:cd_pizmo2013_2.jpg |}} The new PizMO release is finally here after many years of silence, the trio is come back with even more furious sounds and noiz as ever! It's the new generation of power trio for Laptopers & electronics! __extract of their manifesto :__ We create experiences and ambiances with audio architecture. We are an anonymous collective of artists and musicians experimenting w/ audio & radio. We reactualize a drifting theory thru post-radio, sound-systems and computers. We explore portable, mobile, temporary & immersive audio spaces and campings. We favour loading forms, immaterial works and time-based objects. [[press_pizmo]]
===== BOT : COMPOSITIONS CONTINUUMS DES MACHINES ===== **(FIBRR011)** {{:botcdfibrr011_cover_mini_web.jpg|}} New release from Fibrr Records the CD-BOT is a winter recording multiple BOTs (sonic entities) mixed for CD format. This CD offers a fifty minute snapshot of a sound environment continuously condemned to exist, as a false extract it is the missing link between Luc Ferrari’s music concrete and machinic music/composition. [[press_bot]]
===== NANTES IS NOISE ===== "compilation" (FIBRR010) {{:cable3:nantesisnoise5_web_very_low.jpg|}} After 15 years of exploration and support for the Nantes scene, it is time for Apo33 and Fibrr Records to join forces and reveal some of the local talents and the great artists that are flourishing in our city. __With:__ **Keith Rowe, Formanex, Wehwalt, Jerome Joy, Anthony Taillard, Jenny Pickett, Clinch, Luc Kerléo, Semantik, Mathias Delplanque, Julien Ottavi, Thomas Tilly, Morosphynx, Dominique Leroy.** [[press]]
===== C.I.A. - Le POULPE ===== "CDrevue" (FIBRR009) {{cover:poulp.jpg}}
Le poulpe (the octopus) is an analogical and digital organism living in a network. Each branch constitutes a sonic installation which, out of a specific location, collects its own locally generated sound effects, transforms them via a digital automaton into a new arrangement of sounds. The outcome is then broadcast locally, through loud speakers, and on the Net, through streaming. Le Poulpe belongs in the city, where people live and make noise. It gives a virtual body to this city, expressing through sounds its invisible mouvements and its continuous flows. Over the Net, its tentacles collect and connect continuous sonic fluxes from ever changing contexts, to infiltrate and modify another environment. ===== FORMANEX ===== CD "PICNIC - JEROME JOY" (FIBRR008) {{cover:picnic.jpg}}
picNIC (2002/...) is an instrument for a quartet (commissioned by the improvisation electronic quartet Formanex in Nantes), acting on the sound selections and diffusion through a programmed system with a lot of features such as behaviors and inputs analysis and following, an internal memory, the surimposition of different layers and speeds, the controls of the sound spatialization, in order to obtain a composition of listening. PicNIC is a networked blackbox like a fifth member of the band, with some “cybernetics” behaviors. PicNIC must be considered as an attempt of cybernetic programming in music : a program plays and composes with inputs feed by musicians, based on continuous analysis of the sound inputs according to programmed behaviors. ===== GOO ===== CD "tableaux" (FIBRR007) {{cover:goo.jpg}}
The Grand Computer Orchestra (GOO) This project came out of the APO33 collective research programme and first was presented on Friday 15th November 2002 at Nantes Museum of Fine Arts. 6 artists work together on the public presentation of this ‘orchestra’, analysing it from every possible angle, unravelling, unbuckling, skinning it until they discover the cracks that will lead them to new modes of creation. The project rests on the contradiction between two systems : the orchestra and the computer, forcibly linked. The artists do not perform as players of the orchestra, but as actors of an experimental sound event. The project is not experimental because its object is experimental music; it is experimental because it appears incoherent and improbable, because it involves two conflicting choices and because we cannot guess what will emerge as a result. One possible result being of camouflage, of concealment – accepting to amalgamate the cluster of conventions linked to each of these systems (the artists as members of a group using their computers as musical instruments) i.e. becoming a pantomime of an orchestra. Another being of a surprise attack at the core of these systems (orchestra and computers) which would then interrogate each other. The Goo is more then an orchestra because its finality is not pre-determined. It is an open laboratory that evolves with each event ; each event is a new situation where new forms are experimented with (like when some external, far away artists produce sounds that are collected and transformed by the GOO members). The GOO experiments at the two ends of sound production : net-working and sound broadcasting. This poses two questions : how can we create a space that would be open, accessible to the public who do not participate in sound production on the net ? How can we recover and reshape, with the broadcasting device, the spaces which we choose to work in ? These questions have a common answer : the Goo is a multiheaded instrument and a multiheaded broadcasting device. The diversity of the broadcasting systems (i.e. of the listening options) implies a diversity of spaces of intervention and of modes of sound formation in space : sound reveals and reshapes the space. Because each GOO performance implies specific modes of inscription in space and various points of view, we decided that each sound representation inscribed on CD would not borrow the shape of a sound or music piece, i.e. would not be disconnected from the material space where it had been produced. Each ‘tableau’ represents a different point of view on a collective action in a given time and space : the Museum of Fine Arts in Nantes, on 15th November 2002. ===== AMM / FORMANEX ===== CD "CORNELIUS CARDEW" (FIBRR006) - **out of order** {{cover:cd3formanex.jpeg}} The Musique Action festival in Nancy, June 2002: the English pioneers of texture-based free improvisation AMM meet on-stage with the much younger French electro-acoustic improv quartet Formanex. To shuffle the cards, John White and Laurent Dailleau were invited to join in. The menu: an excerpt from once-AMM member Cornelius Cardew's graphic score Treatise -- Formanex had already recorded a few pages of it for Fibrr Records. Of course, Cardew's piece can lead anywhere; it is little more than pretense for a musical collaboration. And it works. The single 45-minute piece begins with a bang, a group "chord" that fades out (the process being reminiscent of John Oswald's favorite introductory trick) leaving almost nothing, except for an electrical hum. In 30 seconds the listener has experienced the full dynamic range of the album. Slowly, a texture emerges, rich, dense, but quiet. The result of a group effort, it leaves no chance to isolate individual contributions. Then, 14 minutes 56 seconds into the track, the near-silence is interrupted by a very precise piano chord doubled by a cymbal hit and something electronic joining the cue. This cue acts like a scalpel piercing through the skin. Gradually, individual voices detach from the collective organism and ooze out. First up is Eddie Prevost's percussion work, followed by Dailleau's theremin, and the entrance of sheep. Yes, sheep, a disturbing arrival and not the last. Other sound samples erupt from time to time, disturbing the flow of the piece, shaking it up. A pop song bursts out for a few seconds, five minutes before the end, and it delivers the final stab. Afterward, the piece dies slowly and peacefully, ending on a Morse code transmission and a faint sine wave. And there's no applause at the end of the disc to distract the listener from processing the experience. And a captivating experience it is. ~ Franois Couture, All Music Guide ===== PHRÉNÊSIE #2 ===== REVUE + CD "a space of language experimentation" (FIBRR005) {{cover:cdphrenesie.jpeg}}
poetic sound pieces with electronic treatments performed by john tilbury, sophie gosselin, julien ottavi, brandon labelle ===== FORMANEX ===== CD "TREATISE - CORNELIUS CARDEW" (FIBRR004) - **out of order** {{cover:cd2formanex.jpeg}} The disc begins in a state of quiet agitation. There’s a near-impossible to hear click, regular, about the tempo of a 45 rpm record but it’s soon swallowed in an only slightly louder rumble which, in turn, is overlaid by a quasi-rhythmic scratch, as of an electrical lead making periodic contact with its ground. This begins to describe the sound-world of {Formanex}, a French quartet which chooses to remain as anonymous as possible, wanting the listener to consider only the music, not the individual musicians or the particular technology they wield. They have worked with {AMM}’s brilliant {Keith Rowe} (see the superb album {[N:Q]}, also on {fibrr}) and that pioneering group’s influence is certainly heard in several aspects of this performance. One is the generation of a palpable aural space; the music breathes and has volume, filling the listener’s ears with all manner of detail. Another is a concern with time and scale. The sonic elements aren’t hurried or pushed but allowed to dwell in the foreground until they’re ready to move on, sometimes to be recalled later, other times to evaporate. {Formanex} is quite capable of interjecting rude noises into the proceedings and it does so as the first piece reaches its latter third, but they’re most effective when investigating subtler areas. The second track begins again with repeated brush-like strokes, this time eventually supporting a combination of percussive, echoing bangs and sine wave blips. A series of groaning, rubbed tones predominates for several minutes but that initial brush pattern always lingers and carries the piece off in an array of soft, keening whistles. The listener has a visceral impression of having “visited” a very real, if abstract, space. An impressive album by a still-young band, {Formanex} is highly recommended to fans of {AMM} and the post- {AMM}, electro-acoustic improvisation scene generally. Formanex/Computers/Bass/Theremin/Guitar/Electronics/Percussion/Saxophone/Objects ===== DIGITALLIVERADIOSESSION ===== CD "s/t" (FIBRR003) {{cover:pochettedigitala.jpeg}}
Christophe Havard (radio, tape, motors, contact microphones, mini-disc), Emmanuel Leduc (no input mixing board, radios feedback, sampler), John Morin (turntables, sampler), and Julien Ottavi (laptop) met in February 2001 for an improvised set of electronic music. The result is “DigitalLiveRadioSession?”, a title that refers, not to a live broadcast over digital radio, but to the instruments used. With two radios and the vocals and other such samples emitted from turntables and tape player, an overall atmosphere of information and media permeates through the static. Tinny, noisy tones, rather than severe, sub-frequency glitches, consume the majority of the session. Halfway through, a soft drone emerges with equally soft bursts of music and other sound. Unfortunately, this only lasts for a few minutes before harsher tones enter. As improvised (and consequently aimless and erratic) music, this is quite good. Capturing bursts of sound from outside media results in interesting sonorities that cannot be achieved with just the other instruments used. The fact that this is French radio allows me to listen to the manipulated human voice without being bothered by words. (I’m glad I didn’t pay attention in French class.) The main drawback is that, although many different sounds are explored over 46 minutes, high frequencies dominate while bass frequencies are nearly absent. (Matt Roberson) - Angbase ===== FORMANEX ===== CD "Live in Extrapool - CORNELIUS CARDEW" (FIBRR002) - **out of order** {{cover:formaa.jpeg}} Formanex is a quartet of improvisers from France (I think from the city of Nantes): Christophe Havard, Anthony Taillard, Emmanuel Leduc, and Julien Ottavi. They work with electronics, percussion, guitar and bass, amplified objects, and saxophone, but more importantly they build up their works from very small elements of sound, isolated, amplified, and repeated. They are inspired by Britain's AMM (Ottavi and Havard appeared on Fibrr's first release with Keith Rowe from AMM). This album documents a performance in the Netherlands which was based on graphic scores from Cornelius Cardew's "Treatise". The best two cuts on the CD are the shortest and the longest ones. The shortest piece, at 5 minutes plus, has an immediacy that seems to capture direct reactions to visual features of the graphic score. One of the challenges with using a graphic score for improvisation is that the immediate reactions to the visual characteristics of the score may in a longer piece feel simply strung together. Some of longer pieces on this disc did not have the level of the urgency, tension, intensity, and focus I look for in improvised music. That being said, the longest piece runs for 24 minutes and has a really strong drive and coherence. This is achieved largely by sustaining steady, insistent pulses through long stretches, shifting the sounds in and around the pulse as it moves forward, and then interrupting those passages to allow a pulse to be reestablished on different sonic terms. The sounds themselves are often industrial and ominous. The total texture is complicated, with lots of soft, sometimes practically inaudible sounds, mixed around and behind the foreground sounds. Formanex also gets great results from amplifying faint sounds, such as the sound of air blown through a saxophone too weakly to resonate the reed in standard terms. Zeroing in on and turning up small sounds brings out the structure and complexity of those noises. This disc does a really nice job of examining sound. (David Maddox) ===== [N:Q] ===== CD "s/t" (FIBRR001) - **out of order** {{cover:nqa.jpeg}} The obscurely titled [N:Q] is a superb electro-acoustic recording of a quartet featuring three french musicians and AMM’s Keith Rowe. The single track is an unendingly fascinating and refreshingly sensuous journey of free improvisation, never lacking for ideas and inspiration. Despite the presence of two reed instruments, the general ambience is electronic with drones of varying depths and sonorities predominating. Indeed, while Havard’s alto sax occasionally breaks through with frantic squiggles, Chevalier’s bass clarinet tends to provide a lush companion drone to that generated by Rowe. By maintaining an impressive concentration on one (apparently) slender slice of the sonic spectrum, this quartet is able to unearth a richness and corporeality often lacking in this sometimes arid territory. One is tempted to credit Rowe with the steadying hand here; his playing is at once both extremely assured and democratically deferential to the group. Along with The World Turned Upside Down on Erstwhile, this is one of his finest projects outside of AMM. Fans of that protean group will find much to enjoy on [N:Q], a state-of-the-art document of electro-acoustic improvisation at the turn of the century. Brian Olewnick (All Music Guide/May 2002)