Our Seasons Reverse
Sonic Arts Composition
Published by Unfathomless
December 27, 2018
Collaboration with Bruno Duplant
Listen/Purchase here
https://unfathomless.bandcamp.com/album/our-seasons-reverse
LOCATIONS : Bogotá – Colombia, Nantes, Paris, Waziers, Saint Nazaire, Carquefou, Calais, Lille, Roubaix – France, and Huddersfield, Marsden,
London and Manchester – UK.
Field recordings and composition by Bruno Duplant & David Vélez..
Diy and hacked Theremins performed by David Vélez.
Organ, electronics, editing and mastering by Bruno Duplant.
All sounds recorded between 2017 and 2018.
REVIEWS AND COMMENTS
The excursion comes without melody and chords, instead its spaces are filled with filmy, scratchy washes of soft buffers that run the length x width, yes, it’s a bit of a wall of sound. As the watery rush and crepetations grow thinner, and the whole composition erodes some, the minimal parts hold together what sounds like a structure made from natural materials like reeds and old wooden planks. The composition again rises from the detritus with a fiery fervor, no I mean like through the vestiges of adding real flames that crackle and hiss over a wayward synth and a distant clocktower – not to mention some cool, cosmic radio waves for good measure. When this goes off there’s no stopping this duo from building a world of organic interference. Bruno Duplant & David Vélez have adapted their sonic phonographies into a stellar spin.
– TJ Norris
REVIEWS
The excursion comes without melody and chords, instead its spaces are filled with filmy, scratchy washes of soft buffers that run the length x width, yes, it’s a bit of a wall of sound. As the watery rush and crepetations grow thinner, and the whole composition erodes some, the minimal parts hold together what sounds like a structure made from natural materials like reeds and old wooden planks. The composition again rises from the detritus with a fiery fervor, no I mean like through the vestiges of adding real flames that crackle and hiss over a wayward synth and a distant clocktower – not to mention some cool, cosmic radio waves for good measure. When this goes off there’s no stopping this duo from building a world of organic interference. Bruno Duplant & David Vélez have adapted their sonic phonographies into a stellar spin.
– TJ Norris / Toneshift
Seeing the title, one first assumes that the artists are communicating across opposing hemispheres, one serenaded by summer and the other draped in winter. Instead they are creating a shared sonic world that highlights the danger of climate change, and the potential of reversed seasons around the globe.
While many of the recording areas overlap (for example, London and Paris), others are unique to the artist. Vélez does indeed interject the sounds of another hemisphere through the recordings of Bogotá. But there’s little way for the untrained ear to tell where or when these sounds are coming from. Add a second layer of disorientation ~ Duplant’s organ and Vélez’ theremin ~ and one becomes lost in sound as well.
Freed from the constraints of identifying any specific source, the listener begins to enjoy our seasons reverse as a composition in love with the sonic possibilities of the world. Birds are present, of course, along with traffic, chimes, the sea, the rain and the snow. One grows intensely aware of the weather as the piece proceeds. To paraphrase Martin Amis’ prescient, apocalyptic novel London Fields (1989), the weather is no longer relegated to the back pages, but has become the news. Duplant and Vélez thread it all together, as if to say, “we are the world,” but also to say, “the world may want to do without us.”
The snowstorm section (beginning in the 20th minute) may sneak in a degree at a time, but in so doing it highlights the danger of global warming. We don’t notice until it’s too late. When the storm lands, it does so with the fury of an unexpected, out of season shift, something that has become all too common in recent years: the fall blizzard, the spring frost. One recalls 1816, “the year without a summer,” only to recognize that this aberration is now a yearly possibility.
In 2019, the role of the field recording artist is more important than ever. Once considered sonic reflectors and preservers, field recording artists are now operating as prophets as well. At various times throughout our seasons reverse (but most apparent in the final third), a bell tolls, but ask not for whom. We know the answer. Some of Duplant’s recordings were made in a museum; imagine that one day, this will be the only place to encounter nature’s placid sounds, while violent sounds roar outside and we stare through tempered glass, wondering how we let the green slip away.
– Richard Allen / A Closer Listen
Here we have two active forces from the world of sound art, which in this case is the combination of field recordings, electronics, and improvisations. Both artists tell us what they did (on the Bandcamp site) and for Duplant that means using recordings he made in various French regions, in 2017 and 2018 (sea, forests, rain, wind), adding organ and electronics. David Vélez uses field recordings from Bogota, France and the UK in roughly the same time frame; he adds DIY- and hacked Theremins. I guess for me the main question is: and then what? How was this made? There is no explanation there. I could believe, looking at the title that it’s about different weather conditions in different hemispheres these artists live in, but how it effectively works out, I am not sure of. There is one piece, of exactly fifty minutes and its clearly in two parts, with around the twenty-minute mark going over to the next one. Maybe one did one half and the other did the second bit? Maybe one had control over the total but both of them contributing material? So it’s all a bit vague, and no doubt that is deliberate. If you heard previous works by these two, you could more or less have an idea what’s coming; there is a delicacy to the music but also something that makes it all bigger. It’s not just a few sounds here and there, but vast amassing of sounds together, so the details get a lost a bit and it all becomes thicker, more expanded, drone-like if you will. That too is a deliberate action by them, I’d say. You are not supposed to enjoy the finer, mightier and smaller detail, but enjoy the vastness of the sound. Here we have the cold wind on a winter’s day (not in California but along the coast of France) versus the chirping of insects and tweeting of birds in sunny Colombia. Here we have improvised Theremin sounds bursting and cracking versus longer organ sound lurking beneath the surface and only towards the end becoming apparent. Changes are minimal, development is slow but there is a fine psychedelic touch to the music. This is something to stick on for some time and let go on repeat and then with every rotation, you will be able to single out new sounds, which is a great thing. Very refined all together indeed this confusing work of field recordings not belonging together but closed in together anyway.
– Frans de Waard / Vital Weekly
A long range collaboration with both extensive field recordings and other instrumentation (theramins, organ, strings), somewhat airier than the prior release though still thick with small, chattering sounds, like a horde of robotic insects, muted sirens, struck metal, exposed wiring and more.
– Brian Olewnick / Just Outside
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