Untethered Sounds

A winter playlist of the Acousmatic

Happy Boxing Day! Today’s article is authored by Michael Eisenberg. Michael is an avid, deep listener of Acousmatic music, which he defines and explains in the essay below. He is an editor at Metapsychosis and writes for Avant Music News.

Public domain image of an Ornate Gramophone Horn

Acousmatic music lends itself very well to correspondences with the seasons. From blustery and violent winter landscapes to pastoral spring settings, this music can evoke it all. Since we’re currently in the dead of winter and Chicago has been pounded with snow this year, all I have to do is look out over my terrace on the 12th floor of an old cold storage building and the inspirations flood in fast and furious. Below are ten offerings for a winter playlist of the Acousmatic—but first, some necessary background.

Acousmatic music has one, very basic superpower: the compositional clay of this artform is typically (although not always) that of sound objects, which are modified or transformed in some way, usually making them unrecognizable from what they were or where they came from. This results in a dissection of the sound source from the sound itself. In the Acousmatic music world, this shape-shifted sound object becomes the prima materia for organized sound. The new kind of music that Pierre Schaeffer was searching for (see below) allows for your aircon unit to take on the role of first violin in an orchestra of vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, bird song, angry insects, arc welders, or any other entity, organic or not.

Importantly, the hide and seek game that these sounds play with the listener is key. It forces them to engage on an imaginal level with these inputs whose cause is hidden. You don’t “see” a guitarist, you don’t “see” a drummer, you don’t “see” an Ondes Martenot player—if you did, your experience would be shaped by those images. The causal reference points in the Acousmatic are few and far between.

Subsequently, what comes out of a rendezvous with the Acousmatic is the raison d’être of this music. It’s quite simply a very personal engagement. What it’s not is something that is force-fed to the listener. It’s yours, and only yours—it’s not something that the ACME Corp. is shoving in your face. It’s your imaginal faculty that’s driving the bus, not mine, and certainly not the CEO’s down in the valley—you own it. No phony bill of goods here; it’s on you, buddy. Baudrillard may dig it but… who knows with that guy.

The big payoff, the gift that keeps on giving, is the engaged listener gets the golden ticket to their very own Cinéma pour l’oreille—Cinema for the ear. You get to sit in the expensive seats to your very own mind movie where you’re the show runner. It’s different each time, and it never gets old!

A little history of the space, and then we’ll get to the playlist.

In 1948, when working as an engineer at the Studio d’Essai (experimental studio) of the French national radio system, Pierre Schaeffer planted the seeds of a new kind of music. He called it musique concrète or concrete music. The name was apropos because this music was constructed of raw sounds, real-world recordings captured on tape with the technology of the hour, and later modified (again, with the burgeoning technology of the hour—tape splicing, loops, and speed changes, basically) and organized into a musical whole. At the end of the day, Schaeffer’s focus was to transform everyday recorded sound into some sort of musical structure, built from the ground up using the concrete of these raw sounds.

I’m trying to avoid getting too far into the weeds, but I feel I must mention Schaeffer’s notion of “reduced listening” because it’s foundational to musique concrète. I mentioned above that this music leans heavily on the mystery of the sound source. In the act of listening, the source becomes unnecessary. There is a freedom here: the listener, now unencumbered of images, of the where and the how regarding the sound, can micro-manage the experience. Single sound objects can be homed in and examined. Questions about the object’s qualities, independent of its cause or context, can be asked. Texture, duration, timbre, dynamics and other intrinsic qualities can be looked at, measured, manipulated.

This is all fine and good if you are a creator or artist of this music but what about the rest of us? Who cares about all that high-falutin’ quantitative malarky? Let me suggest a possible alternative to the quants for us plebs: I call it, “the noticing”. By not giving us the origin story, the sound object can be noticed by the listener in such a way that a shift can occur. What would it be like if the sound object was transformed into a sound subject?

And engagement like this, by “the noticing” of a sound, creates a one-to-one relationship. Doing reduced listening in this manner can act like a sonic handshake, a reciprocal arrangement, where the listener gives attention to the sound, and it promptly returns the favor with a reward that opens an imaginal pathway to a very personal mundus imaginalis. I would certainly buy that for a dollar! That’s my idea of reduced listening. Henry Corbin might have called it an act of ta’wil—an Arabic term that means layering an esoteric interpretation of a text, idea, concept or, in this case, music over its outward exoteric appearance. A lifting of the veil. A return to origin.

Ok, so let’s fast forward quickly through the rest of this history so we can get to the music. Schaeffer subsequently back pedaled on many of his concepts, mainly due to philosophical reasons. Can a person really engage with sound in this way without letting images pollute the landscape? Is reduced listening just too hard for the average listener? Can ALL sounds be taxonomized into neat little characteristic traits as Schaeffer was wont to do? Does all this rigid theory and doctrinal purity sabotage the plain enjoyment of music?

These were just some of the issues Schaeffer, in a selfless act of being honest with himself, had about his own theories. But the music carried on. There was a second generation of sound artists that transformed the musique concrète into the Acousmatic. (A term popularized by François Bayle from the Greek akousma—”a thing heard”.) Artists like Pierre Henry, François Bayle, Francis Dhomont, Luc Ferrari, Bernard Parmegiani, Beatriz Ferreyra and Denis Dufour advanced the strict concepts laid down by Schaeffer but did it in a way that provided much more aesthetic freedom. Using Schaeffer’s ideas as a creative springboard, these artists catapulted Acousmatic music into realms of the architectural, immersive, psychological and metaphysical.

Collectively, these artists (apart from Dhomont, who developed his style independently) were some of the original members of the GRM (Group de Recherches Musicales), and their influence has been felt far and wide. My own personal gateway to this world was Parmegiani’s stone cold classic, ‎ La Création Du Monde, thirty-five years ago. From there, I’ve been on a non-stop feeding frenzy, and my wallet still hasn’t forgiven me.

Here are some Acousmatic offerings that conjure the season in its various guises. All of these will be Bandcamp links, so they are easily accessible. Additionally, I would consider some of these recommendations to be Acousmatic adjacent. The music space has been saddled with a lot of different labels but, as Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart) allegedly uttered, “labels are for cans, man”.

I’m going to go with Natasha Barrett’s take on this and say that the main umbrella term for this music is “electro-acoustic” with “acousmatic” inhabiting the tree branch directly below that.

An Acousmatic Winter Playlist
(Headphones highly recommended)

Olivia Block, Heave To: Maritime field recordings, gorgeously rendered metallic ambience, subtle skittering electronics, acoustic strings and brass all come together in a tension filled watery trek to… somewhere, inside or out, the mental narratives are endless.

Francis Dhomont, Images nomades: His final album. Chilly, alien and utterly compelling. Seemingly more synthetic than what came before and that’s not a bad thing. Quiet and cold as dusk falling on a frozen tree line… until it’s not.

Natasha Barrett, Isostasy: My favorite artist working in the space today. This album, from 2002, is a granular sound paradise evoking mindscapes aplenty. Listen through headphones, look out any window, even the one behind your eyes—there are whispers and screams there. You’ll see them… I promise.

Bernard Parmegiani, Multichannel Works 02-The Creation of the World: A defining work (one of many) in the space. Timeless, yet ever changing. When it comes to Parm, even poetics break down. His catalog of works speak to the infinite in ways that take lifetimes, many lifetimes to understand. What can I say? This is a song for all seasons. (This is a binaural recording therefore, headphones are mandatory.)

Barbara Ellison, Murdúchann-Vol 1: Filigrees of whispering sonic wraiths weaving tapestries on endless planes. Fragile webworks of ice, supporting winter memories that crumble and reconstitute themselves at will. I saw her mix a live diffusion a few years ago that transcended time, space—and everything in between. (Bonus: you’ll want to check out Vol 2 as well.)

François Bayle, Camera oscura — Espaces inhabitables: At the same level as Bernard Parmegiani, these two works by Bayle bring me into a cold nightscape that oozes mystery. He is a master of situational space, both in the way he moves the sonics around the listening field, and in the way he removes, creating felt absences. It’s dark but not entirely foreboding, even playful in spots. The narratives are yours to be had. As essential as it gets! The aural candy, the micro-details, they are everywhere.

Beatriz Ferreyra, Senderos de luz y sombras: No playlist, seasonal or otherwise, would be complete without something from Beatriz. Along with Bayle, she is of the 2nd generation of artists spawned from the work that Schaeffer started, who is still creating today. These are two recent (within the last 10 years) pieces that paint two portraits of winter. Wind torn, bleak and desolate in the first. Something more subdued yet threatening in its seemingly reigned in potentials—a dam on the verge of bursting—in the second.

Luc Ferrari, COMPLETE WORKS 15 • Saliceburry Cocktail (2002) • Dérivatif (2005-08): Singling out a Ferrari pick for this list is impossible, absolutely futile. His work is all over the map, and I would consider him the third point of the master’s triangle that includes Parmegiani and Bayle. In this case, I picked two of my personal favorite pieces from him, pieces that I think are a good representative of many of his sound signatures. I would ask the listener to just make themselves comfortable (curl up somewhere with a “do not disturb” sign), put on the phones and just get lost in his many faceted, idiosyncratic world that can only be of his making.

Annette Vande Gorne, Tutti Frutti: Vande Gorne describes this album as “Music of Meaning rather than Music of Sound.” Much of my time engaging with it has been during the winter months. Unlike many of the above offerings, my imaginal path on this one has led me into a rather melancholic memory palace. I don’t think this is uncommon when listening to the Acousmatic, especially during the holiday season, and it’s only recently that I’ve begun to take notice of these feelings, woven out of these strange sounds. Approached with intention and respect, the sound, as equal, does indeed reciprocate. The journey can be as personal as you make it.

Paul Dolden, Below the Walls of Jericho: Let’s end this survey with 14 minutes and 36 seconds of unbridled, winter violence. This is what happens when you stack up to 800 tracks of acoustic instruments on top of each other. TEXTURE. TEXTURE. TEXTURE. You supply the weather, let Dolden magnify it beyond limits unfathomable. I’ve said this before about his “Walls cycle” (of which this is the first of three) … No one, NO ONE, walks away from these pieces unscathed. Crank this Mutha!!!

BOOM

Michael

---

Michael Eisenberg is an editor at the Metapsychosis Journal of Consciousness, Literature, and Art. As part of his curatorial work for the Acousmatic Crossings series at Metapsychosis, Michael hosts Live Diffusion calls, scheduled Zoom sessions featuring artists who have or will be writing essays for the series. Michael’s passion project is to overlay esotericism, both ancient and modern, on top of Acousmatic music to discover connections, correspondences, sympathies, and synchronicities which aid the listener in receiving an integrative, imaginal experience. Across his writing, Michael demonstrates how Acousmatic music removes the visual source of sound purposefully; encourages deep, imaginative listening; allows sound to become symbolic rather than representational; gives the composer granular control over sonic “geometries”; and creates a liminal space where listeners can encounter non‑ordinary states.