Sun Dog’s “Col des Tempètes” reviewed by Salt Peanuts

eRikm (aka Erik Matt) is a French sound artist, electronics player, composer, improviser and visual artist, who has made a life-long habit of crossing all territories and «world-systems» deemed «independent», «institutional», and is known for his collaborations with Christian Marclay, Thurston Moore, Otomo Yoshihide and vocal artists Phil Minton, Catherine Jauniaux, Natacha Muslera and Dalila Khatir. Isabelle Duthoit is a French vocal artist, classically-trained musician and clarinetist, who has collaborated with Franz Hautzinger, Georg Gräwe and Carl Ludwig Hübsch. Together, eRikm and Duthoit are the Sun Dog duo and Col des Tempètes is their debut album, recorded in stereo at M!lieu in January 2022.

eRikm tells that duo was initiated when he and Duthoit were climbing «the Kilimanjaro of Provence». Then, «Beyond the Dome of the Storms, we reach the pass. After climbing this modest 1909 meters, we descend on the partially-icy asphalt. The setting sun casts on the summit rare silhouettes of pine trees shaped by the wind. The sea of clouds at our feet reminds me of the past experience of the SunDog» (Sundogs are colored spots of light that develop due to the refraction of light through ice crystals), which he experienced in Iceland.

Col des Tempètes (Strom pass) offers 14 distinct wanderings in sounds and vocal utterances. eRikm creates suggestive and abstract, otherworldly sounds while Duthoit assumes the role of a modern-day shaman and casts her seductive yet vulnerable spells and chants. eRikm extends gently the vocal range of Duthoit with his sonic wizardry and Duthoit colors his inventive electronics palette with enigmatic, wordless dramas. But often you can not know who produces the electronics, processed and mutated sounds, and who is producing the acoustic, human voices. Sun Dog becomes one, inseparable entity, mirroring its multiplying refractions with expressive, inspiring imagination. Eyal Hareuveni

via Salt Peanuts

Sun Dog’s “Col des Temp​è​tes” reviewed by African Paper

Der Musiker und Künstler ErikM und die renommierte Vokalistin Isabelle Duthoit bringen unter dem Namen Sun Dog ein gemeinsames, auf experimenteller Stimmperformance und einer vielfältige, nicht minder experimentierfreudigen Elektronik basierendes Album heraus. “Col des Tempètes” entstand nach ausgedehnten Wanderungen der beiden in eher unwegsamen Gegenden in Island und Frankreich und unter dem Eindruck lokaler Naturphänonene (der Gletscher Vatnajökull, der Mistral). Das Album erscheint als CD und zum Download bei Crónica.

via African Paper

New release: Haarvöl + Xoán-Xil López’s “The Uncanny Organization of Timeless Time”

We’re proud to release the new album by Haarvöl and Xoán-Xil López, created from organ improvisations in an 1801 Iberian pipe organ and further reworked with electronics and field recordings. “The Uncanny Organization of Timeless Time” includes four tracks that are involved by a counter-narrative of a strange familiarity that surrounds them and is embodied in an absolute temporal timelessness.

“The Uncanny Organization of Timeless Time” is now available as a limited-release CD, download or stream from Crónica.

Bruno Duplant’s “Sombres Miroirs” reviewed by Audion

Although the promo blurb tells me “Bruno Duplant is a prolific composer and a musician living in the north of France. He has collaborated with many musicians around the globe and has also made solo works” he’s one of many younger musician/composers in the contemporary field that I’d never heard of before (at least to my knowledge) with a vast repertoire of releases. Currently this is number 100 out of 104 releases on Discogs where he’s a main artist.

SOMBRES MIROIRS is two big slices of sonic construction that evoke a somewhat Karlheinz Stockhausen TRANS like feel, or that of some Paul Dolden, making use of instrumental sounds subjected to intense processing, filtering and layering. As such, it amounts to thick slabs of ever changing sound, with tonalities shifting over and within the music, on which certain sounds break the surface: wind instruments, chimes, and all sorts of percussion, sometimes becoming the focus where the droning textures move to the background. This careful use of composition, moving from thick bombast to more fragile elements, is the key to the work’s success, achieving a sense of composition. There are thus many surprises within the sonic adventure, not least some lovely bowed bass work at the opening of the second part, recalling Fernando Grillo’s work with the great Iancu Dumitrescu.

In all, SOMBRES MIROIRS is much more than the “very nice avant classical” I noted on my first listen, it is a groundbreaking new development on an all too rarely visited genre in new music. Alan Freeman

Haarvöl + Xoán-Xil López’s track “The Previous Extant of the Hereafter” reviewed by Ambient Blog

A bold statement in the liner notes: ‘There is no progress in art’. (I personally would have added an exclamation mark).

This is followed by some philosophical musings about the relationship of art with time, and ‘with its time.’ And about the fact that the ‘sounds we hear on this album are grouped in a harmonious relationship’, are ‘a deliberate escape from the linearity of chronological time and the appetite for another, imaginary time, which allows for the most diverse and strange associations.’

Sounds somewhat pretentious and difficult to grasp perhaps, but don’t let that put you off. After all, the most interesting ‘ambient’ music should make you lose track of time. And, above that, may also reveal an uncanny yet familiar strangeness. 

The music on this album consists of improvisations on an Iberian pipe organ built in 1801, played by Xoán-Xil López, in a sonic dialogue with the electronics and field recordings performed by Haarvöl: Fernando José Pereira and João Faria. 

The four tracks on this album all ‘contain a certain degree of familiarity that is simultaneously undermined by an inherent strangeness’, demonstrating what Freud meant with his notion of ‘unheimlich’. But you’ll probably feel that ‘familiar strangeness’ even without reading the liner notes.

via Ambient Blog