A split album as part of the GRM Portraits series bringing together two pieces by French sound artist Eve Aboulkheir, and by Lasse Marhaug, a figure from the Norwegian experimental scene.
"22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream is a perceptual trap. Inspired by an experience of intense perceptive disorientation while crossing a market in China, Eve Aboulkheir reinstantiates, in the field of sounds, the swirling and anamorphic universe of thwarted perceptions, surrounding multitudes and shifted sensations. She thus constructs a dreamlike and artificial universe, suspended and hyperactive, which is both an electronic vortex sucking us in and a mechanical ballet developing its arabesques around us, caught and fascinated by these volutes of sound that fracture like a kaleidoscope in which our eyes-ears are immersed. 22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream approaches the musical form in the most direct way possible, i.e. through its effects and its empire on our sensorium.
Using concrète techniques to collect, transform and assemble sounds of various origins (sounds of tree branches, leaves, but also guitars or synthesizers), Lasse Marhaug elaborates a dense and subterranean work, which unfolds through the multiple dimensions induced by the great diversity of its sound material. There is a labyrinthine feeling in this work, a feeling that is better understood when the inspiration for the title of the piece How to avoid ants is revealed, a very practical and then poetic undertaking, that of avoiding the anthills lining the path to the forest camp in the kindergarten to which his little girl, who was then frightened of insects, was going. It is such an activity of circumvention, diversion and byways that Lasse Marhaug uses to create an exploratory and evasive music."
François J. Bonnet
Perpetrating the fertile collaboration initiated in 2012 with Recollection GRM, INA GRM and Shelter Press (after
Editions Mego) offer the Portraits GRM complementary series, no longer focused on the "classic" GRM repertoire but towards recent creations commissioned by the GRM to artists from all horizons. Under the aegis of
François J. Bonnet, the Portraits GRM series focuses on important and emerging figures of the experimental music scene and highlights the notion of work rather than album. By reaffirming the concept of musical work, the Portraits GRM series seeks to renew with the pioneering work that the GRM Collection series but also the Philips Prospective 21e Siècle collection had achieved so admirably: offer a panorama of current musical experimentations and embrace a more durable scope with works that manage to extract themselves from an increasingly tyrannical and increasingly hazardous present-time. At a time when nothing knows how to "leave a mark", this series aims to address both current listeners, and explorers of the future. Many releases in the collection are contemporary works by two different musicians, each piece taking up the space of one side. Longer works however, fill an entire record.
Eve Aboulkheir is a French performance / sound artist and electro-acoustic musician who graduated from the
Villa Arson in Nice. Her sound installations play with the noises of reality, taking sounds from the environment to use them as instruments.
Lasse Marhaug (born 1974) is a Norwegian experimental musician, sound artist and producer who primarily works in the field of noise music but frequently drifts into other areas such as improvisation, jazz, rock and extreme metal.
He participates or has participated in the projects Nash Kontroll (with Mats Gustafsson and Dror Feiler), DEL, Testicle Hazard, Jazkamer/Jazzkammer, Origami Replika and Lasse Marhaug Band. Other collaborative partners include Tore Honoré Bøe, Marc Broude, Anla Courtis, Carlos Giffoni, John Hegre, Kommissar Hjuler und Frau,
Merzbow, Paal Nilssen-Love, Nordvargr, Maja Ratkje, The Skull Defekts, Ronnie Sundin, Sunn O))), Ken Vandermark, Jon Wesseltoft, Runhild Gammelsæter, John Wiese, Jenny Hval, Kelly Lee Owens,
Jérôme Noetinger...
