“Juryo: Durée de la vie de l’ainsi-venu” reviewed by Neural


The connections between the radio-drama and the experimental music should be an object of study. Some mature reader may remember the strong relationship between these fields, especially during this age where the offline fetishism re-activates forgotten or obsolete formats. The Paris composer Emmanuel Mielville studied sound engineering in a cinema school and later learned the basic concepts at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), a main institution for this unconventional culture. His current approach is the natural consequence of this training course. Juryo: Durée De La Vie De L’Ainsi-Venu recalls in the title one of the most famous Buddhist texts, the Mahayana, and recalls many quotes of collage technique, a tradition deeply rooted in all the Asian culture. It’s the perfect closure of the rim: the embracing and exotic sounds tell about some stories, and the album seems a travel of the imagination and mind. The field recordings are the object of manipulations and mixes. The weaves are narrative and enchanting: for example, the audio captures from the Copan monastery, the FM modulations of a Hong Kong radio or the Buddhist funeral singing in a small village in Taiwan. There are sounds of synthesis too (like in “Tanit Astarté”) or erudite Artaud-like quotes to Héliogabale, the moon godness or to the primordial Phoenician myths. Contemporary tastes are mixed to contemporary caesura, large space is left to different knowledge and suggestions, no need of any “tabula rasa” but skillful attempts to make centrifuges with the use of different techniques and theories. In Mielville the sound perception and the memories cut in the urban environments are the basis of the following stratification. The sound overlaps might be now out of focus and irregular, now clearly designed, but anyway they are the “concrete” substance the listener should get and represent his personal way to think of the sound as something unmeasurable and suggestive, a vibes travel which always refer to his passion for the radio medium. The release elevates the catalogue of Crónica Electrónica, a label since ever focused on this music genre and on the evolution of the sound concepts and landscapes. Aurelio Cianciotta

via Neural