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A Lesson in Listening

for The Attic Magazine

Paris is a place brimming with culture, where every form of art imaginable, however niche, can find a healthy following, be it experimental film, clowning or noise music.

And there’s no better time to observe this than during la rentrée, which is probably the craziest time of the year. Just try to picture each theater, cinema, museum or other type of cultural institution starting to steadily bombard everyone with offers or entertainment and knowledge.

Among the more popular and visible events, drowned in the monolithic presence of Festival D’Automne, a small festival shines through like a hidden gem – it’s L’Audible, a yearly inter-disciplinary experience dedicated to the shape-shifting landscape of experimental music.

Co-curated by les Instants Chavirés and Jérôme Noetinger, the festival focuses on what the French call musique électroacoustique. Originally a term coined by the GRM, it’s now being used to designate all forms of experimental music using recorded material for modern composition, musique concrète, EAI, field recording, sound art and even noise.

If Sonic Protest is the more playful rock/dance/big room avatar of les Instants hors les murs, L’Audible focuses on the quieter, academic part of the experimental spectrum - it’s the older, grown up sibling.

It’s quite a discreet affair of roughly 150-200 people, happening in the somewhat hidden Théâtre L’Échangeur at Bagnolet, an Eastern suburb neighboring the mythical Montreuil.

Caught in the murky mid-September slumber, it’s been a festival I somehow always missed for various reasons. L’Audible started out in 2011, focusing mostly on listening sessions and composer showcases, with a couple of live acts. It was Thierry Schaeffer, the director of Les Instants who approached Jérôme Noetinger, a prominent figure in the French underground and boss of label/distro Metamkine, to curate a festival focusing on electroacoustic music. The main idea was to find a slightly bigger space, which would allow them to host a multi-speaker system and to present a large panel of electroacoustic music from pure musique concrète to live performances.

It now grew into a three-day multimedia extravaganza, including concerts, conferences, experimental film screenings and sound installations.

Given the neighborhood’s questionable reputation, it’s quite impressive to see this little courtyard near Gallieni and turned into a cultural hub. Most importantly, this metro stop is famous for an abundance of weed dealers and stolen phones.

In many respects, this sort of event could only be possible in a place like Paris, where state funding, combined with a healthy public outreach from cultural institutions leads to highly educated audiences and a buoyant music climate.

One has to remember that Pars is, after all, the place where you can go to any cinema (except for the trashy UGCs) and see the audience sit through the credits. They take their 7-year-olds to the Pompidou, have philosophy classes at the age of 4 and a contemporary art center in every suburb. This also breads saturation and might render a lot of people chronically jaded, but it’s still quite impressive.

It is very improbable that anywhere else on this planet you would have an average-looking septuagenarian coming to complain to the organizers after a painfully long performance, that a certain audience member has been whispering during the show. “This is musique electroacoustique, sir!”

People here are trained to sit in silence and listen to particularly difficult music with a certain sense of pride.

In the courtyard of L’Échangeur, during the weekend of the 16th, an enclave dedicated to attentive listening was formed – the venue hosted a concert hall, with records stands from Metamkine, a wine bar/bistro right across and the small building for La Lutherie Urbaine, an organization dedicated to building/performing with DIY instruments.

The festival felt like a mix between an extended family reunion and a peer review; a large number of the audience was other musicians and composers rather than just regulars. The local celebrity spotting included Sophie Agnel, Ignatz Schick and Erik Minkinnen, to name just a few.

I actually ran into Ignatz in Berlin three weeks later, at a completely different festival, and he shared a story of Jac Berrocal hitting on Felix Kubin during the first night..

Perhaps the most impressing was Aaron Dilloway, the big noise star of Wolf Eyes and Hanson Records fame, sitting quietly in the front row at every single performance.

After the better part of three full days spent at the festival, the most poignant words that come to mind would be darkness, silence and stories.

Apart from the screenings and sound installation, the festival was a highly non-visual experience.

Jérôme Noetinger acted as master of ceremony through the festival, taking the time to give little speeches and introduce every performance. It wasn’t particularly formal, but rather awkwardly informal.

The best part was during the first night, when he asked the first two performers, Felix Kubin and Jana Winderen, to introduce their pieces.

Visibly uncomfortable, Kubin began his story in his signature German accent – what followed was both instructive and endearing. He told us about Max Brand, a sort of mad genius music maker, who began developing his own synthesizer, in collaboration with Robert Moog.

Only his ideas were quite extravagant and, as they started growing more and more elaborate, he had used up all his funding and Moog was forced to even pay his own traveling expenses.

Because of this, they only built one unit of the aforementioned machine.

He recalled how, during a residency in a monastery, he started using this synthesizer, which was located in a room hosting an exhibition of Moog and Brand’s correspondence. The machine seemed to take on a life of its own, slowly going out of tune as soon as it would turn on, with its many oscillators creating strange patterns and harmonies. The result oscillated between organ-like sounds and heavy, punchy tones.

He would spend hours alone with it, simply turning it on and listening to its glitches, while walking around the room and reading their letters. He felt a certain unease, as if their spirit was still in the room.

This discreet ghost story embellished the solemn and aggressive dark tones with an extra layer of ectoplasm. As a result, the spars, modern techno piece, routed through the 8-speaker acousmonium, had a particularly spectral feeling.

I believe his story managed to transform the already intense piece into a very engaging audition. After seeing his more dance-y performance in 2011, as well as a playful, voice-oriented endeavor in 2013, it was refreshing to catch a glimpse of another side of this fascinating German space dandy.

One cold November evening, getting out of the traditional Wednesday night experimental screening at the Pompidou, we were poking fun at a friend who dozed off during the screening. Kitty, the filmmaker friend who invited us, was arguing that, actually, that was the best way to experience this sort of movie, in the fragile state between dream and awake.

My long voyage sure took its toll and, during his mesmerizing set, I was constantly drifting in and out of consciousness, which gave the experience a very intense, hallucinatory feel.

But the best part was still yet to come. I’ve been familiar with Jana Winderen’s work since Heated, her 2009 EP, topped end-of-the-year lists of music bloggers. It was quite striking to finally see her in person.

As I arrived some 4 minutes before the first concert that night, the room was a compact group of chairs, facing one of the walls. After Felix’s piece, instead of an intermission Jerome turned to the audience and asked them to rotate their chairs in a circle formation. This brief piece of collective performance art had surprising effects, breaking the dense mass into more recognizable pieces; people were finally finding friends or discovering new companions.

In this whole process, I ended up seating next to Felix himself.

Jana quickly began her introduction; she started by calling out the obvious awkwardness of the situation, as for her, being surrounded by people was a strange position, being used to always working by herself. As a biologist, she studied the movement of plankton and other microorganisms, as well as the effects of global warming. Her research took her to Antarctica, where she was surprised to find many broken, insular ice pieces instead of the regular massive blocks.

She talked about the variety of sounds she’s been recording, from water in various states to insects, wind and animals.

“It starts with ice and it ends with this mustachioed sea lion I came across”, she said.

However prosaic, her explanations may have deepened the mystery, for what followed sounded even less grounded in reality than Kubin’s ghosts.

Textures and field recordings are well-established terms in the experimental music vocabulary, but what Jana shared sounded more like the pure construct of a febrile imagination rather than a series of careful observations of the world around us.

While her sounds did seem somewhat familiar, there was something profoundly outlandish in her curatorial choices and delivery, a special sort of sensitivity that rendered them unique.

Her insects were not as noisy and literal as Dave Philips’, but rather airy and smooth; hers wasn’t the analytical editing of Chris Watson, but a sort of warm, earthy type of world building.

And, at one, point, this incredible howl, impossible to place, started pouring down from the speakers, resonating through the space. I don’t know how many people remembered the sea lion from the story, but this sound was terrifyingly alien and achingly human.

I remember reading that many Foley artists use the scream of the sea lion, especially in horror movies.

By the time the lights went back on, we were still haunted by this mysterious howling. It was probably my favorite piece of the festival.

The next day, the effect of the Parisian drizzle translated into a fever that appeared like clockwork and made me miss the afternoon 16mm experimental film screening and listening session.

It was, however, a sensible choice, as the following night was quite dense, with four performances that went on well into the night, or just barely enough in time for the very last Saturday metro.

Jérôme hosted the evening by himself this time around; I somewhat missed the awkwardly endearing introductions by the artists.

The evening had a slow start; Barbara Ellison’s first series of phantoms were rather unfocused, but as soon as her live performance began, the atmosphere changed completely. A video camera was facing a large table with a piece of paper on it. After a long silence, a lady, dressed in black, approaches the table, takes out a crayon and starts drawing circles on the surface. Her circular motions, amplified by a contact mic, slowly become more and more textured, evolving into a mesmerizing series of drones, going stronger in intensity, as the paper turns into a perfect piece of abstract expressionism.

This sparse, strikingly simple setup led to a dense, ritualistic music. It was the perfect art school graduate sound piece – it had a performative element, a physical trace and something to hang in the gallery at the end.

Among the many changing seating arrangements for each piece, some of them quite gratuitous, I very much enjoyed Angelica Castello’s take to the space. For her tape piece, she placed amped up cassette players in a circle around the room. It was one of the few visual pieces, showcasing the beauty of obsolete technology, from chunky Dictaphones to that double-deck Philips stereo we all probably had back in the ‘90s.

The 8 tapes played looped vocals, various textures and instruments, creating a highly dynamic, delicate piece.

By the end of the evening, Francisco Lopez welcomed us to the most striking seating arrangement. I’ve seen him perform back in 2011, at probably my first edition of Présences électronique, and was expecting his signature blindfolds. That Saturday, he played the first or second afternoon slot in the small auditorium; after his set, everyone started using the blindfolds for the rest of the day. It was as if they’ve finally been given permission to close their eyes and fully take in the music. It was quite beautiful.

Only this time, he demanded that the chair circle would have people facing each other, creating a new sort of spontaneous intimacy. I took my place on one of the floor cushions, awaiting his soothing collages. He urged us not to take off the blindfolds, no matter what.

I have to admit to have cheated during the show, and, to my surprise, I caught a glimpse of him frantically pointing a flashlight in circles towards the crowd. I couldn’t perceive anything different while blindfolded, but there was probably some physical effect to his invisible light show.

As the last of his reverbs slowly died down, the room was vibrating with the sizzling sound of someone snoring. One could say that this was living proof that, whatever form of hypnotism he attempted, was working.

On Sunday afternoon, the long awaited sunshine finally made its way back into the grey capital.

I attended a performative debate between Rudy Decelière and Bastien Gallet, a sort of Youtube party between two best friends, only with field recording and philosophy instead of videos.

I hadn’t seen Rudy’s installation yet, but this experience had me intrigued.

Stepping into the small building of La Lutherie Urbaine, tucked away in the left corner of the yard, i was welcomed by shushing and a strange feeling of walking into a forbidden area. Perhaps the same feeling you get when you arrive in a quiet space and even your breath sounds too loud, no matter what you do. At the end of a narrow hallway filled with gorgeous DIY instruments, now sitting silently, followed Jour par jour, perhaps the most quiet sound installation imaginable.

There was a rare beauty in its organic simplicity : hanging from the ceiling from long, copper wires, dried magnolia leaves were slowly rotating, scratching the floor, guided by tiny magnets that resembled robot Aspirin. It made Julius Rolf sound like EDM.

The sun was finally setting and the very hyped last evening fast approaching.

After a gutsy tape set from Italian duo Lettera 22, it was finally time for Aaron Dilloway, the big star of the festival.

The theater brought out the bleachers, which filled up within minutes. There were people on the stairs and on the floor, waiting patiently with a glimmer in their eyes.

In the middle of the stage, at a small table, Aaron was sitting in front of a gear cluster. He slowly started off the show by dragging his heavy boots on the floor, creating acoustic loops witch circular motions. Moments after, the chaos began – tapes were destroyed, a contact mic was hanging from his mouth, screaming, panting and turning his machines louder.

The performance grew more and more visceral, to the point that his pain became unbearable. The 20-odd minute set was a polarizing moment of dark catharsis.

By the end, despite its sonic virtuosity, the entire experience felt deeply personal, almost too intense, to point of being uncomfortable.

The little table remained in the middle of the stage, deserted, broken tapes and other technological debris lying on the floor like a gutted animal.

It was a very stark contrast to the more buttoned-up endeavors from the previous evenings. Although it might read as intentionally provocative, there was something undeniably real and emotional in his piece.

The act of active listening changes your view of the world; it makes you a little more aware, slightly more sensitive, and more connected to the world.

It’s those moments when you stop focusing on creating a detached space around yourself during your busy day, burying your face in your phone screen and become attuned to the brief glimpses of beauty around you. It may be that tiny Algerian grandpa that looks like he came back from the ‘70s smiling at you at the grocery store, or that middle-aged woman watching Celine Dion videos in the back row of the 95 bus, or that red-leaved plant called la misère...

Naturally, one cannot picture the sheer existence of a festival like L’Audible without Presences Electronique, the GRM effort coordinated by Cristian Zanessi. While Presences is more of a blockbuster, with hundreds of people attending, mind-boggling sound systems and free admission, L’Audible is the film d’auteur.

However, the two coexist and even collaborate : ‘’ I think Audible and Présences électronique are working in the same field but with some different directions. We also did a collaboration with a mix commission to Lasse Marhaug and we hope to do this again soon.’’, said Jérôme.

Despite its modest scale, L’Audible has grown into a compelling little festival; there are certainly still a lot of things to be improved and their seating gimmicks do not compensate for a more complex sound system, but whatever direction they choose to take, they should maintain their intimate presentation of well-curated propositions.

While I’m still kicking myself for missing Michel Chion’s Sunday morning piece, I do console myself with the story that Rudy told us.

During a residency in Morocco, he was passing through the bazaar, recorder in hand; it was one of those rare days when everything seems to fall into place – a windless afternoon when each sound was telling a story, coming together in a highly cinematic way, as if someone had been conducting it. He was moving cautiously, trying to make as little noise as possible, thinking about how unique and incredible that moment was.

When he finally arrived at the end of the bazaar, after this intense period concentration he gave out a deep exhale, and, relieved, reached to turn off the recorder.

He suddenly noticed that the machine was not even on in the first place…

L’Audible festival took place in Paris, September 16th-18th

all photos by feral noise

#reviews #the attic #instants chavires #l'audible #jerome noetinger #felix kubin #jana winderen #aaron dilloway #francisco lopez