Uploaded September 2014 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago
Elementa (1998), creates a soundscape so intoxicating and permutable, so enraptured with its own sounds and textures, with its overblown harmonic crackles and dripping sedimentary layers, that the listener wants to burrow into every sample and settle there. Mr. Risset’s homage to the elements has an almost pagan sensuality encompassing the infinite and mundane simultaneously. Elementa is formally, sonically, and emotionally convincing. The four movements sound well individually, but together they showcase a composer completely in command of his own voice.
Video created with Sonic Visualizer and vokoscreen on Kubuntu 14.04 (Linux).
Elementa (1998), creates a soundscape so intoxicating and permutable, so enraptured with its own sounds and textures, with its overblown harmonic crackles and dripping sedimentary layers, that the listener wants to burrow into every sample and settle there. Mr. Risset’s homage to the elements has an almost pagan sensuality encompassing the infinite and mundane simultaneously. Elementa is formally, sonically, and emotionally convincing. The four movements sound well individually, but together they showcase a composer completely in command of his own voice.
Video created with Sonic Visualizer and vokoscreen on Kubuntu 14.04 (Linux).
![Robert Normandeau - Venture (1998) [2/2]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jN0E2Kw1ZN4/mqdefault.jpg "Robert Normandeau - Venture (1998) [2/2]
Composer: Robert Normandeau
Commission: Codes daccès, with support from the CCA , Musiques & Recherches
Premiere: February 28, 1996, Échange Québec-Belgique, Lorchestre de haut-parleurs 2, Agora de la danse (Montréal, Québec)
To Catherine Béchard
The title refers to the 1960s musical group The Ventures (theirs was the first stereo album in my small but growing record collection) but also to all of the progressive rock music of that decade and the one that followed. It is exclusively made up of fragments of that music. These are used not as quotations but rather as the sonic archetypes that an entire generation of composers, my generation, was listening to as it was growing up. It was while I was working on Venture that I understood something about the origins of my compositions during that period. To this music I have added quotations from the sixteen movements of Mussorgskys Pictures at an Exhibition, which became a cult classic when Emerson, Lake & Palmer released a reworking of it in the mid-70s. This was the work that enabled me to move from rock to classical music.
Venture is made up of six movements that refer to different states of existence: Innocence, Stabilité [Stability], Tension, Délire [Frenzy], Violence, Sérénité [Serenity], and preceded by an Introduction. These are punctuated by variations on an ever-present movement, Tunnel (a metaphor for the transition between these states) which runs through the work.
[English translation: Tom Carter]
Venture was realized between 1996 and 98 in the composers studio and at the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons (Belgium). It was mixed at the studio of Queens University in Belfast (Northern Ireland, UK). Thanks to Todor Todoroff and Michael Alcorn. The work was commissioned by Codes daccès (Montréal) and Musiques & Recherches (Ohain, Belgium) and was made possible by the support of the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA). The first version was performed on February 28th, 1996 at Agora de la danse (Montréal) as part of the festival Échange Québec-Belgique.")
![Ludger Brümmer - Lizard Point [1997]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/k6X1EybO7SU/mqdefault.jpg "Ludger Brümmer - Lizard Point [1997]
Lizard Point was created with the help of the ZKM (Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe) using the software Genesis created by ACROE (Cadoz, Luciani, Florens) Grenoble. The piece simply relies on physical models using aspects of particle physics (see Cadoz and others ICMC 1995 Proceedings). The sounds were then further modified with conventional sample processing (CLM by William Schottstaedt).
The models are programed via patches which create vibrating structures. These structures are animated to control and understand the energy flow of the vibrating structures. The movements of single masses are recorded into a file and normalized to serve as a soundfile. The patches are created out of single masses and can be combined in a intuitive way. The masses are connected to each other via links. Masses have to be attached to fixed points. A simple vibrating structure can be understood as a guitar string with fixed attachments at both sides of the string. The string is represented by a chain of single masses. If one mass is displaced, like plugging the string, the energy of the displacement would be distributed over the whole chain of masses until it develops resonances dependent of the length of the string.
The result of this effort to model physical conditions are sounds which seem to have a natural background. Of course the natural background has a negative aspect as well: the reference to an existing physical environment decreases the excitement or the unusual aspects of a sound. Because of this other sample modification techniques are used as well to modify the sounds after the process of synthesis.
Lizard Point was created as a commission of the ICMA for performance at the ICMC 97 in Thessaloniki.
Video created with Sonic Visualizer and Vokoscreen on an OpenSUSE 12.3 Linux System.")
![Jean-Claude Eloy – Kâmakalâ (1971) [excerpt 1]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kVNO9gvnraI/mqdefault.jpg "Jean-Claude Eloy – Kâmakalâ (1971) [excerpt 1]
PLEASE SUPPORT THE ARTIST. If youre interested in this music, buy the cds. music piracy is hurting the artist who created the cds. Check out this site to recieve legal music:
http://www.metamkine.com (worldwide)
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Jean-Claude Eloy – Kâmakalâ
(excerpt)
Choir – Schola Cantorum Stuttgart, WDR Köln
Chorus Master – Herbert Schernus
Conductor – Bernhard Kontarsky, Jacques Mercier (3), Michel Tabachnik
Directed By [Schola Cantorum Stuttgart] – Dr. Clytus Gottwald
Orchestra – WDR Rundfunkorchester Köln
Kâmakala (Le Triangle des énergies) - Pour trois ensembles dorchestres, cinq groupes de choeurs, avec trois chefs
composed in 1971.
A Production of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne, 1975.
Within the framework of the festival Begegnungen mit Indien (Meeting with India).
Studio recording at the WDR, Cologne, the 21 February 1975.
video created with Audacity, Sonic Visualizer, vokoscreen and OpenShot on an openSUSE 13.2 Linux System.")
