CD : Compilation City Sonic 2012-13-14

This eighth City Sonic compilation (the second after that of 2009-10-11 on the Transonic ‘alter label’) features a selection of sound pieces (installations, performances, concerts…) presented at the last three editions of the International Festival of sound arts in Mons.

With Macheen (aka Montreal musician-composer Alexander McSween with its recent rythm box only project), the Belgian composer Baudouin De Jaer (from his project on the visionary artist Adolf Wölfli), Nicolas Jorio (guitarist of the Paris band That Summer which contributed to an audio K7 –sold out- for the exhibition of Julien Sirjacq, ‘The inner ear’), Jean-Paul Dessy (director of Musiques Nouvelles) on cello with Jarek Frankowski for subtle electronic processing, Belgian saxophonist Charles Maurice JJ with a mild electro dreamy landscape, Julien Poidevin (with a truculent text of Belgian surrealism poet Achilles Chavée by himself), Stéphane Kozik with an excerpt of its “Echo System” (electro-aquatic vibrations installation), Nicolas Gaillardon in a Boxing-to- Boxing noisy-rock – the latter two being the winners of the call for proposals by the transborder platform for innovative music, Espace(s) Son(s) Hainaut (s), Tomoko Sauvage playing her delicate water-filled porcelain bowls, an electro-organic excerpt from the organic soundtrack of the An-Art-Key installation by Keyaerts Gauthier, the first appearance on disk of the interesting Belgian duets Pastoral (Christophe Bailleau / electronics + Philippe Franck / vocals, synth and guitar) and Ordinaire (Eric Therer / spoken word + Stephan Ink / bass, electronics), Montreal poet Jean-Marc Desgent dialoguing with the sounds of Gauthier Keyaerts at the Sonic Garden Party, the French free harpist Hélène Breschand, the Portuguese audio artist and performer Margarida Guia with a collective piece created during workshops with-for disabled people, a nocturnal and sensual soundtrack by Paradise Now for a Régis Cotentin AV installation, the experimental-lyrical duet Quasi una fantasia (Brussels multi musician Pierre-Jean Vranken and the Austrian diva Christina Van Peteghem), promising discoveries that participated in the Park in progress project (Mathias Isouard on resonance vibration ,: suc:; and its haunting analogue tape loops, Alain Lefebvre in a “Frequency Vibration Sound’, powerful percussionist Jason Van Gulick, soundscapist Phil Maggi both defended by the independent label Idiosyncratics) or a jingle made for Radio Sonic without forgetting Baldwin Oosterlinck, Belgian pioneer of the art of the listening that closes poetically the disc with a presentation of his piece ‘Quintet’… all revealing the innovative diversity of the City Sonic creations.