1004 Eric Cordier / Seijiro Murayama:::: Nuit

"Nuit" was composed in 2007-2008 as requested by Seijiro Murayama. He invited me to compose for him a "piece mixte", where his percussion was back to back to a tape.

As he is Japanese, I was inspired to compose around a series of recordings done in Japan the year before. However, the piece evolved from a simple composition to a performance where I asked Seijiro, beyond playing only percussion, to add to it various live actions such as the use of voice, breath, bubbling sounds, movement in space and working with lights and shadow theater. During the show, I was also involved in the actions such as painting with fire and moving the microphone to create a close and distant effect on the sound.

The field recording for the composition was done between july-august 2006, mainly in Honshu, Aomori Prefecture with the help of Satoko Fujimoto and her family. In order of appearance: Rice field with buffalo frogs in Kanedate Kizukuri, bird in a forest on Hokkaido island, firework at Goshogawara City, cicadas at Iwaki Mountain, announcement to "be careful with fire" in Kanedate, ritual in the Bodaiji Temple in Osorezan, and a toy-windmill nearby, bell of the Kanedata Temple, drumming on iron protections against the snow along the road.

The tape uses some French recordings too, on part 4 : Olivier Maurel and Georges at Observatoire Astronomique de Haute Provence 2006 (F 04, Saint-Michel-l'Observatoire), Brotone Forest (F 76) Sep. 1993, and (p. 5) Chinese New Year festival in Paris Feb. 2008. And thanks to Thierry Madiot and Vincent Vantalon for some samples of their instruments.

"Nuit" has been premiered the 25th April 2008 at Le Compa,(Agriculture Museum Pont de Mainvillers - 28000 Chartres) during Festival, RME, Rencontres Musiques Electroacoustiques de Chartres, curated by Shoï Lorillard and Cecile Pennetier.
~ Eric Cordier

Audio CD, 6 panels digipak
50 minutes+
Release date: Dec 2010
12 Euros + shipping order

Related resources:
Also by Eric Cordier
Eric Cordier: Osorezan

Geographically connected
Battus / Marchetti / Petit: La Vie Dans Les Bois  
Pascal Battus: Simbol / L'Unique Trait D' Pinceau
Eric La Casa: W2 [1998-2008]
Jean-Luc Guionnet: Non Organic Bias
Eric La Casa / Cédric Peyronnet: La Creuse

Review(s):
The Watchful Ear
... Since getting home I have been listening to a quite extraordinary CD by Eric Cordier and Seijiro Murayama that somehow casts my mind and ears back to our walk. The disc, titled Nuit and released by the currently on-fire Herbal International label is a mix of field recordings of wildlife, distant traffic, aircraft, human spluttering, moaning and wheezing and an awful lot more. So, for a number of reasons I will probably always associate this CD with today’s excursion…

Forgetting the leisure pursuits linked to my midlife crisis for a minute then, this is still a really intriguing CD. Although there is a page of liner notes that explain the “composition” here to some degree, exactly what we hear here is still a bit of a mystery. Murayama apparently asked Corider to compose a work for him that involved his percussion playing placed “back to back” with tape. This initial request somehow mutated into the mass of field recordings, human vocal sounds and percussion (some on drums some on metal railings it seems) that we hear on these five seamlessly linked pieces. Cordier used field recordings he made in Japan in 2006 to build the work, adding in some pieces recorded in France as well. He took everything from firework displays, singing, (actually moaning very loudly) bullfrogs, passing aircraft, bits of human chatter, watery gurgling sounds, toy windmills and a whole load more and brought them all together into a bustling, thoroughly bright and present set of concrete recordings.

Into all of this though we hear Murayama every so often. There are various percussive sounds heard here and there, but whether they are all his is hard to tell. He certainly is recorded breathing, moaning, spluttering, whispering and sounding generally short of breath throughout, giggling to himself at one point, mimicking snoring and almost breaking into conversation elsewhere. Murayama’s contributions apparently came from a live performance by the duo which also including the percussionist moving about the space and working with “lights and shadow theatre”. Its hard to tell how much of these additional elements make any audible impact on the CD. Cordier also apparently recorded himself “painting with fire” during the performance.

All of this combined creates a really rather spectacular and very difficult to pin down collage of sounds that feels constantly fresh and somewhat wild. There is a real energy to the music, a sense of it being alive, more than just a load of soundfiles pushed around a computer screen. The way that the human sounds fold into the wildly varying field recordings is both inspiring and disconcerting. At one moment we might be listening to strange distant thuds, percussive scraping and the call of a Japanese safety officer warning about the dangers of fireworks and the next a closely miked gurgle captured at the back of Murayama’s throat. We start to lose track of what is what, if it was ever clear in the first place, and the hammering of a snow barrier in a Japanese field could be the scrape of Murayama’s snare drum or the snuffling of him breathing hard through his nose. It all comes thick and fast and floods the room as you listen, a sheer barrage of sensations and sounds that is really quite overwhelming.

There have been some great albums involving field recordings of late, the real cream of them finding new ways to revitalise the concrete genre, often by merging them with live or separately recorded instrumental sounds. Nuit (it doesn’t say so, but I suspect that maybe most of the sounds were recorded at night) really feels alive and vibrant. There is no sense of dreamy ambience, droning layers or predictable jump cuts here. The fourth track of the five suddenly takes everything and forces it somehow through a digital sequence that seems to squash all of the sound into a kind of eighties synthesiser work out, stopping the piece as we knew it and throwing it all through a digital granulation process for a minute. This section of the disc sounds completely alien and completely artificial, a kind of aural liquidiser that digitally squashes the sound in an somewhat cheesy manner that is not disguised in any way. Then as everything slows to a grinding halt we hear the hoot of an owl somewhere behind it all and the field recordings begin to flow again.

This is very hard music to describe in words. It really is quite different, original and thoroughly inventive. It seems to ignore the conventions of what we might expect from this kind of music and just go wild however it wants. I had felt a slight loss of faith in the use of field recordings as a compositional tool a month or two back, but this disc, along with Vanessa Rosetto’s Mineral Orange and Eric LaCasa’s great W2 (also on Herbal) have shown what can really be done. This CD may well be the best of all of those, quite remarkable indeed.
- Richard Pinnell -

Just Outside
A very unusual and enjoyable collaboration and a good example of a fresh approach to field recordings as integrated with improvisation. At Murayama's request, Cordier conducted a number of recordings at various sites in Japan (and some in France) ranging from actual field, replete with frogs and birds, to urban environments, households, temples, etc. To this soundtrack, Murayama added percussion and vocal sounds although one of the fascinating and ingratiating things about the disc is that, more often than not, the listener is hard-pressed to distinguish any particularly percussive sounds from the environmental ones. One can make guesses although concentrating on that aspect quickly becomes meaningless and distracting. You're better off simply allowing yourself to drift off into this dreamlike construction with its enormous variety of sounds, gentle and harsh, serious and comic, almost always multi-layered and extremely enticing. Richard posted a fine review a couple months back with more detail and Cordier, in the comments section, offered more and linked to a related video involving "painting with fire" (whence the cover image of this disc) which is quite enjoyable and interesting to play, at volume, along with the CD (!).
Cordier also explains the brief electronic portion that disrupts things, not in a bad way, toward the latter half of the disc, a disconcerting intrusion that somehow works, jolting us just as we're beginning to settle in and accept this sound-world. Further, "Nuit" ends with a massive "drum solo", a rather magnificent one, a barrage of clattering cymbals, struck skin and rubbed surfaces, more sleet storm than anything else.
A fine recording--check it out.
- Brian Olewnick -

Vital Weekly
The subtitle for this release could have been 'music for tape and percussion', in a good modern classical sense and of course its the player who asks the composer to prepare a tape, in this case Seijiro Murayama asking Eric Cordier for a tape to be used in a live performance. It's not just percussion sounds to be used, but also voice, breathing, moving around in space and Cordier moving around with a microphone and painting with fire. Cordier's tape is made of field recordings, mainly from Japan, but also France - both the home countries from the artists involved. It takes a while before realizing that it actually involves percussion in this piece (which consists of five parts). Now of course Murayama is the kind of player who easily extends beyond the ordinary playing of percussion, so it might very well be that his sounds are there from the beginning. By the time we come to the fifth part the role of the percussion becomes much clearer, and even seems to be part of the tape - or perhaps not? That's the kind of illusions that I like. What is what here? Where ends the field recording, what makes up the sound of percussion. That's the sort of questions raised by this fascinating disc. An excellent interplay of both ends meeting up. Sometimes the sounds stand firmly by themselves - the chirping of insects, the rolling of a snare drum - but they also grow towards eachother and then seems to melt together - the audio illusion in full force. Moving from introspective moments at the start towards heavily treated material towards the end - a journey no doubt. An excellent disc of electro-acoustic music, improvised music and field recordings presented as one finished unity. Excellent. Oops, I said that already.
- Frans De Waard -

Paris Transatlantic
Listing the sound sources, which include buffalo frogs, forest birds and a temple ceremony besides other glimpses of reality, gives you the wrong impression regarding Nuit. This is acousmatic music with added elements of improvisation. Murayama's disconcerting vocal expressions are complemented by his evenhanded percussiveness (except in the concluding movement, which sounds like a fragmentation of Nick Mason's interminable rolls in A Saucerful Of Secrets), while Cordier's processing attempts to dislocate our expectations, and at times succeeds. The album's significance resides in its refusal to adopt the "let-the-nightingale-do-the-work" strategy; acoustic designs are deprived of emblematic façades, and there's poetry – and irony – in the curled grunts of those frogs, not to mention the instant cessation of activity when a bird starts singing at one point. And the human constituent is never invasive. Considering that the performance plan includes games of light, shadow theatre and fire painting – visual elements that might better justify the few segments that don't excite in a strictly musical sense – this is a solid enough release, questionable finale notwithstanding.
- Massimo Ricci -

Monsieur Delire
Un disque fascinant qui met en rapport deux univers sonores très différents. Le percussionniste japonais Seikiro Murayama a demandé à l’artiste sonore Eric Cordier de transformer une piste de percussions en œuvre électroacoustique mixte pour percussions et bande. Cordier a obtempéré en développant une trame sonore qui démarre dans les champs de Honshu, où résonne le chant des grenouilles, pour se terminer dans un univers électronique déconstruit où la clameur des percussions est manipulée de sorte que ses soubresauts rappellent...un croassement. Entre ces deux pôles, des trésors d’invention, de mystification et de mise en contraste. Une œuvre frappante de 55 minutes en continu.

A fascinating record putting in relation two very different soundworlds. Japanese percussionist Seikiro Murayama asked sound artist Eric Cordier to transform a percussion track into a mixed piece of percussion with electroacoustic tape. Cordier developed a soundtrack that starts in the fields of Honshu, where the song of frogs resounds, and ends in a deconstructed electronic universe where the clamour of percussion is treated in such a way that its throbbing is reminiscent of… frog songs. In-between these ends is found a wealth of invention, mystification and contrasting. A striking continuous 55-minute work
- Francois Couture -

Improv-Sphere
En principe, je n'ai rien contre l'électronique, sauf les field recordings... L'aspect figuratif des enregistrements concrets enlève beaucoup de l'impact et du potentiel propre à chaque son, à mon sens, ça en dit trop sur la musique et ça entrave le travail le l'auditeur en quelque sorte, puisque le potentiel absent de ces textures sonores, c'est la possibilité d'association d'idées et d'affects remplacés par un référent déjà donné qui nous empêche de donner du sens à ce que l'on écoute.
Abstraction faite de ce ressentiment envers la musique concrète (ou les fields recordings comme on dit maintenant mais je vois pas la différence), il n'en reste pas moins que ce disque a quelque chose (mais peut-être que je ressens ça seulement à cause de mon admiration pour ce spécialiste de la caissse claire et ce virtuose de la vielle à roue...). Bon déjà, j'imagine que le but était de retranscrire musicalement la nuit, et en l'occurence, on peut dire que ce but est atteint. Tout y passe: l'ambiance nocturne naturelle à travers des crissements et des insectes, aussi bien que la nuit urbaine à travers cette ambiance sombre, lente et tendue rendue par le frottement de divers objets et percussions ainsi que des enregistrements d'annonces ferroviaires ou publicitaires.
Mais le meilleur ne réside pas ici je trouve, ce qu'il y a de surprenant dans ce disque est l'agencement des différentes strates sonores qui s'opposent ou s'interpénètrent selon les moments. Chaque son est traité comme un objet avec ses singularités, puis il est manipulé et associé à un autre objet sonore pour enfin créer une texture: et c'est bien l'agencement de ces différentes textures en strates (ce qu'on compare habituellement à l'architecture) qui fait la force et l'attrait de ce disque. Car, abstraction faite de leurs référents, ces nappes sonores, de par leur timbre, ne ressemble à rien de connu (musicalement); et c'est alors que, de ce magma sonore, peut émerger le génie de Cordier (Enkidu, Suture, Pheremone) et Murayama (K.K. Null, Suture, Lo). Tous les deux résident en France, et ils ont plusieurs fois collaboré ensemble (notamment sur le magnifique Suture), mais on ne peut pas dire qu'ils sont des stars ici: et pour cause, tous deux sont ancrés dans une culture expérimentale radicale et extrême (cf. les deux solos de Murayama pour caisse claire et cymbale, un seul paramètre: le timbre). Mais ils ont beau être radicaux et extrêmes, je ne dirais pas non plus qu'ils tombent dans le formalisme ou l'autosuffisance, quand ils enregistrent, c'est pour communiquer quelque chose, et ça s'adresse à des gens, ils ne font pas exprès d'être incompris pour se lamenter d'être incompris. La musique de Cordier et Murayama, qu'elle soit électronique ou acoustique, est bien une part d'eux-mêmes qu'ils souhaitent partager à un maximum de gens mais sans faire de compromis.
La démarche est radicale, l'écoute est dure et demande beaucoup d'attention, mais le jeu en vaut la chandelle. Il y a plein de trucs à ressentir et à penser à travers cette écoute, le son du duo est vraiment remarquable par sa singularité et son "authenticité", et l'agencement organique des strates sonores est digne d'un Berio, d'un Ligeti ou d'un Penderecki (même si ça n'a rien à voir...).
Recommandé!
- Julien Héraud -