eTcology is the title of a 5 track album, based on the live recordings of E t c ...'s performances at the third edition of the Festival Des Ephémères, on June 30th and July 1st 2012, in the Jardins d'Eole, Paris XIX. Listen to eTcology with the embedded player below; download a hi-quality digital copy at Bandcamp's.
The sequel to eTcology is éTcholalie, a 6 track album based on the live recordings of E t c ...'s performances at the fourth edition of the Festival Des Ephémères, on June 29th and 30th, 2013, also in the Jardins d'Eole, Paris XIX.
july 07, 2012.
The Jardins d'Eole, opened in 2007, is a public garden in one of the most colorful, but also most densely populated and poorest neighborhoods of Paris. The long, 42.000 m2 green space, borders on the dense pack of railway tracks that lead to and from the Parisian railway station Gare de l'Est.
Jardins d'Eole, Paris XVIII (Pictures by Wawan, gour-man). Source: qype.fr |
The Eole Gardens are a well-kept and well-surveilled 'ecological' green spot in this interesting and very lively part of Paris, providing a play-ground, picnic & meeting place for the many and very divers factions of the neighborhood's population. With strict opening hours, that depend a bit on the season, but say, from early morning till sunset.
Between June 29th and July 1st, the Jardins d'Eole were the scene for the 3rd edition of the Festival des Ephémères, a fringe art festival organized by an association that goes by the name of Henokia, with support from the city of Paris, the city's 18th arrondissement and the Ile de France region.
'Henokia fait état d'un art hybride,' it says on the association's web site, 'd'un art tentacule, d'un art en morceaux, d’un art monstre et le monstre contient le vide et la transcendance. Elle met en avant des approches pluridisciplinaires, des expériences limites du corps et de l'esprit, des performances et des interventions hors cadre(s), des rapports différents à l'espace ou au spectateur.'
I like the 'art tentacule' part in Henokia's statement. The three day festival was far from a high-brow cultural/educational event imposed upon the unsuspecting locals and regular visitors of the gardens, that came there to play, eat and relax. It rather was acted out as a somewhat devious, but unobtrusive & playful ritual. Like a many-armed octopus hiding somewhere below, whose tentacles every now and then, every here and there swooshed upwards to do a little dance, and then disappear again.
Sometimes, the man-ivy (Jean Christophe Petit) could be seen strolling by, walking very slowly, very dignified.
Maki Watanabe was around most of the time, somewhere, doing Butoh the Butoh way: with or without an audience.
There were installations, performances, music, under trees, in the grass, on the steps, in the gardens' corners; poems, more dancing, objects, a sound walk ...
Visually the most striking, also because it was set up in the middle of the further virtually empty concrete square that one came upon when entering the gardens through the main entrance, was Philippe Desclais' installation: La forêt pendue à un arbre.
From a distance, Philippe's installation looked like a found dead tree branch dangling from a makeshift rack. On closer inspection though, the branch appeared to be a quite intricately 'sculpted' piece... The forest hanging from a tree... It is a nice, succint description of how these t(h)ree days in the Jardins d'Eole actually felt like.
It was seated under Philippe's forest, that on each of the three festival days, for twice half an hour, with E t c ... we performed a dark electric urban (un)nature-scape.
Anthony Carcone played the electric bass, at some times using his bow as if it were a feather, at other moments as if it were a razor or a saw. Jacques Foschia brought assorted pieces of electronics from Brussels, together with the two tube radio's, that he used to scan the radio waves that at the time of our performances traversed the Parisian aether. I, for the occasion, had dusted off my old but always faithful Korg MS20.
On the festival's final day, Sunday July 1st, we were joined by Cécile Zylberajch, singing a selection of classical melodies (Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, Eisler a.o.) whose texts, in some way or other, related to nature, forests and trees, with Cécile's crystal clear voice hovering angelically over the dense layers of our gloomy electronics.
A wonderful experience, indeed, due to the performing in public space, the very diverse audience (and very divers audience reactions), and the fact that the series of 6 sets played on 3 consecutive days enabled us to really set out on a long and in-depth exploration of the sonic textures spilling from our combined instruments.
[ From the (Zoom) live recordings I made of our performances on June 30th and July 1st, I edited a 5-track digital album that you can listen to on Bandcamp, or using the embedded player below. You can also download E t c ...'s eTcology in high quality, for a price that you may name yourself. From zero to little, a little more, or an awful lot. Thanks for your support. ]
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[added August 14th, 2012]
Review of eTcology on the vivat1801 blog (July 8th, 2012):
"[U]n projet mêlant des expérimentations électro-acoustiques, modulations synthétiques pimentées par un chant divin rappelant parfois les vocalises de Pierrot Lunaire ou autre chefs-d'oeuvres avant-gardistes, même parfois un chant ethnique, ou des extraits radio, qui confèrent au disque une réelle chaleur.
On voyage loin de notre sytème tonal. Le son de la basse et de la distortion est phénoménal par les fréquences utilisées et par la puissance. D'autre part cet opus est constitué de plusieurs mouvements alternant explorations noisy orgasmiques et de délicieux passages d'accalmie où le chant est valorisé.
[...] Un chef-d'oeuvre electro-acoustique pour commencer l'été 2012."
[added November 15th, 2012]
"Atmospheres! Dark, rich atmospheres that quickly sculpt themselves into vast nocturnal worlds so vivid you can see them as you listen". -Guy Maddin
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tags: E t c ..., Paris, Henokia, Festival des Ephémères, post-experimental, post-classical
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