(In 200 Words, we highlight a new record we like a lot, via a 200 word review by one of us (Marc Masters or Grayson Currin) and 200 words (or so) from the artist about whatever they choose…and sometimes we go extra-long on a record we extra-love….)
i speak volubly but i didn’t think that much about it broad sand and me turning in broad circles fluent, rotating easily on the axis i speak repeatedly talkativeness as full of words as a baby so thrilled to finally communicate something outside of the blood i didn’t think that much about it okay, that’s not really true. i didn’t think about anything else i sleep in a rootless coil i just spent three minutes chasing a roach around my bathroom it ran in broad circles; i finally gave up and let it go and watched it run under the door and out into the hall i feel like i’m rehearsing for a speech some sort of concession, thanking my supporters for their hard work and efforts on my behalf over the last few difficult years here is an example of what we don’t want to see: (volubly, volubly) please come back i am digging a tunnel through solid limestone it’s 10:05 pm everything is illuminated, if gently something still keeping it from complete caliginious obscurity but not for long dim, it’s fucking dim in here and futile the resistance is building and then, and then i speak and don’t think i should have learned something in all this time you have to rehearse your presentation, practice completing within the time limits allowed check your gestures and facial expressions for anything that could distract your audience stand up, stand up adapt to the actual situation perhaps at some time you have acted in a play, even if it was when you were a child take notes, don’t pretend this is not the most important thing that has ever happened to you set it up, be purposeful change the wording of your sentences if you think it might help be literal in your bodily movements, your pitch, rate and volume i have done something very wrong i took advantage of the situation. i didn’t think that much about it. okay, that’s not really true i practiced until i bled and slept at the bottom of a lightsome pit and re-read this in front of a mirror until i couldn’t recognize my own face or my own voice i tried to hide under the pretense of concern, so wordy smoothly, smoothly as if i could be anything but the awkwardness you already know
As a complement of the too short biography and his more intimate portrait, in the 2006 interview with Luc Ferrari’s wife, Brunhild Meyer, we felt it was important to explain more clearly the relationship Luc had with concrete sounds and electroacoustic composition techniques.
When he composed in the studio, Luc Ferrari simply put into practice the “do and hear” theory inherited from Pierre Schaeffer, back in the day when they had worked together at the GRM at the end of the fifties: record sounds, listen to the recording, change it by editing and some simple experiments, listen again, change, listen again, mix, and so on. Any new production started with several sound recordings, usually done outdoors with a tape recorder and a mike. He was not directive, when, for example, he passed on his knowledge during a training session or workshops. After a short technical introduction, he encouraged a collective effort around an initial general idea like, for example, Eros and Thanatos… and let the musical ideas come to light. During his sound reports, he tried to be the most receptive possible to the events he encountered, even directing himself by asking some passers-by questions. He was stimulated by all the sound sources he could find: Nature’s sounds, voices, classical instruments, and synthetic sounds. Then, while listening to the rushes in the studio and at all the other stages of composition, from editing to the final mix, he fine-tuned his understanding of the sound material in order to extract its “essence”.
He used to check out morphologies, spatial relationships and natural theatrical games between sound sources and arranged them like stories. The sounds were seen as characters with adventures. He was interested in the sound treatments inasmuch as they were able to reinforce the first impressions while listening or as a specific formal objective: to create a contrast or even a touch of humour with another sound or sequence, reinforce a movement, give extra depth to a fly-on-the-wall scene. He often worked with allegories: women laughing or speaking represented the eternal feminine, sheep baaing symbolised Nature that he loved so much or even the attitude of Panurgian sheep that men sometimes took. According to him, every technique was valid to reach this freedom of expression, so typical of his character, notwithstanding as wide a range of sounds possible. To do that, he integrated the different successive technical advances, from the VCR to the synthesizer to the computer.
Finally, all these accounts converge to remind us of his wonderful ability to mix sounds. He knew how to keep a sound sequence alive while losing the anecdotal side to it. He was able to bring us to the edge between the concrete and the abstract, between sounds with recognizable sources and sounds thereto unheard of, thereby giving us extra depth to those events.
It was in this form of art, which went hand in hand with the trends in vogue among artists in the sixties, situated somewhere between American Pop Art and French New Narrative Figuration, that Luc Ferrari constantly called for and perfected his electroacoustic repertoire; his piece Hétérozygote (1963-64), is considered a prototype of “anecdotal” musical works. However, he returned regularly to the most classical writing because he never followed any one style or method exclusively; the chronology of his repertoire is there to prove it.
i want to warn you that i am not very sophisticated. i do not know how to dance and when i laugh my mouth flaps open like a transom and my head flies back and sometimes (if i am in a chair, which i often am not) the force of my laughter thrusts the whole chair backward so that its legs make a rude sound against the floor like someone breaking wind. i am not skilled in the pleasures that even mildly refined people are moved by. i only know how to have sex in two different ways; i mean, i’m aware of others but i’ve certainly never attempted them, even when i’m drunk, which i should also mention is not infrequent. there has not been a social grace invented by humankind that i cannot graze against or bruise with my bulk. i get angry far too easily over things that are not important, and chafe at the burden of even the most minor responsibilities that others shrug off with ease. i interrupt my friends and talk over their more thoughtful words like a glazed-eyed, stagestruck donkey. i scratch my legs on the bus like an ape and in the evening in my room i scratch worse, flung wide like a screen door. my body appears to me to be a soft, pale ledger book for an endless and ever-growing array of embarrassing ailments and flaws that even in the moments when almost all are afforded some scrap of beauty still heaves and wracks like an old radiator or the creaky hull of a cargo ship. i am often distracted and curt with strangers. i use terrible language. i let dishes pile up in the sink precipitously while i stare out of the window and think about singing au claire de la lune on the little path in your garden right under the brickwork archway that leads to the awning over your back door.
