Handbook of Acoustic Ecology (review)

Kristoff K. Roll: Des travailleurs de la nuit, à l'amie des objets. Compact disc (mini), 1997, Collection Cinéma pour l'oreille, Metamkine MKD024; available from DIFFUSION i MéDIA, 4850 avenue de Lorimier, Montreal, Quebec H2H 2B5, Canada; telephone (514) 526-4096; fax (514) 526-4487; electronic mail info@electrocd.com; World Wide Web www.electrocd.com/

In 1993, the French electroacoustic performance and composition duo, Kristoff K. Roll, consisting of Carole Rieussec and Jean-Christophe Camps, released their musical travel diary, Corazón Road (recently reissued by the Montreal electroacoustic label, empreintes DIGITALes). This disc presents an acousmatic document of their travels in Mexico and South America, a reworking and reliving of the sound materials they captured during their voyage. This genre of sound art combines natural soundscapes, cityscapes, conversations, and the sound of life on the road with subtle in-studio processing, editing, and composition. Corazón Road beckons the listener to embark on an audio fantasy that reflects both the sound events and the emotional environments inhabited by the original auditors, a type of fanciful artistic reconstruction of the creators' sonic memories. The duo amply demonstrated their skill and adeptness at integrating and transforming large masses of diverse material into a convincing and coherent audio portrait. Since then, Kristoff K. Roll has worked on numerous pieces originating from travels and excursions in various parts of the world including Africa and South America. A trip to Brazil in the late 1990s resulted in "a long political epic . . . which brings together the 'bearers of utopia,' companions, and friends." Des travailleurs de la nuit, à l'amie des objets (From Night Workers to the Friend of Things), from 1997, originally an extensive live work involving several performers, has been released in a shorter acousmatic version as part of the Metamkine Collection. This "Cinéma pour l'oreille" series is issued on mini CDs (not minidiscs!), each comprising a single electroacoustic work with a typical duration between 20 and 35 min. Other composers represented in this series include Luc Ferrari, Michel Chion, Patrick Ascione, Éliane Radigue, Christian Zanési, and Jim O'Rourke.

The principal materials and focus of Des travailleurs de la nuit are recordings of street d2emonstrations, conversations, and monologues connected with particular political protests which occurred during 1995-1997 in various locations in South America, France, and Sarajevo. Grafted onto these are sonic interventions by live performers at a concert in May 1997 during the Musique Action festival in Vandœuvre-les-Nancy, France. These interventions consist of a diverse collection of sounds including synthetic timbres, percussion, and various sampled materials that are integrated with the ongoing protest and conversation materials. These function sometimes as background, sometimes as solo material, and sometimes as punctuation. The entire work was subsequently refined and sculpted in the studio into this final 21:45 min version. The tension and energy of the shouting and chanting of the protest segments is often taken up and continued in the purely electroacoustic and performance sections by means of analogous rhythms and timbres. The lengthy conversation segments provide havens of reflection and insight where the timbres of French and Spanish dialects co-mingle in a unified texture spiced with urgency. This collection of voices, street events, and electroacoustics becomes a virtual roundtable on political dissent and protest, a convention of powerful thoughts, beliefs, and convictions typically avoided, unknown, and unheard. The listener is taken to the street to become one of the voices of protest, taken into people's homes to listen to their tales of repression and resistance. It is storytelling, political critique, documentary, and soundscape fantasy rolled (no pun intended) into a finely structured audio work that engages the auditor simultaneously on a sonic and political level.

Reviewed by Laurie Radford
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

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