Gruenrekorder » kdi dctb 146 [e]

kdi dctb 146 [e] | Cédric Peyronnet

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Reviews

This work is one of the results of three years of sound recording around the sound Valley Taurion / Thaurion (France); it could be seen, in a way, as an immersion in the sound world of this valley: rhythms and textures of water, sound events that marks the time.
This was originally composed as 4 channels piece – as a stereo piece we tried to keep that sort of 3D effect, but it may not work on all headphones and stereo systems.

„kdi dctb 146“ [www.k146.org] is a „sound mapping“ project about the sound environment of the territory covered by the valley, thus creating one of the possible soundscapes. The project has several layers and levels of sub-projects, interpretation and interaction. The original creative act takes place „in-situ“ by immersion, listening & recording.

An underlying theme of „kdi dctb 146“ is to question the apparent banality of such a sound environment and finally the unsuspected depth of an „active listening act“ of such a place. Ultimately, it would be like, throughout this kind of fictitious soundwalk, to be « à la recherche du Presque rien » (in the search for almost nothing).
Each original recording, often very minimalist in form, may seem at first glance trivial or very stereotypical. They even includes a certain amount of confusion, linked to the context of the on site recording, and I did not sought to erase what is generally perceived as a disturbing external signal (aircraft, road traffic ..) but my idea was in most of the cases to reveal it.

This project also deals with the stereotype of the „beautiful sound recording“ and, of course, with the conditioned reflex that we usually associate with.

Extract 1

Extract 2

Extract 3

Extract 4

1 Track (54′47″)
CD-R (50 copies)

2005 – 09 août – St-Martin-Terressus : Le Bost. 27 août – Les Billanges : Les Lilas / D29a ; St-Dizier-Leyrenne : Pont de Judet ; Châtelus-le-Marcheix : Ponchale. 4 octobre – St-Priest-Taurion : Centrale de Chauvant. 14 octobre – Châtelus-le-Marcheix : Chauverne-Neyre ; St-Martin-Ste-Catherine : La Châtre, Les 4 Charrauds. 5 décembre – Châtelus-le-Marcheix : Le Pont de Châtelus, Ponchale. 25 décembre – St-Priest-Taurion ; St-Laurent-les-Eglises : Pont du Dognon. 26 décembre – St-Laurent-les-Eglises : Pont du Dognon. – 2006 – 21 janvier – Royère-de-Vassivière : Lavaud-Gelade ; Le-Monteil-au-Vicomte : Rigole-du-Diable. 20 février- St-Martin-Terressus ; Les Billanges : Pont-des-Lilas. 21 février – Royère-de-Vassivière : Rigole-du-Diable. 12 mars – Châtelus-le-Marcheix : Barrage de l’Etroit, Le Cap, Ponchale. 23 avril – St-Dizier-Leyrenne : Murat. 3 mai – Les Billanges : Pont-des-Lilas ; Le-Chatenet-en-Dognon ; Le Dognon. 25 mai – Soubrebost : Chute-du-Poirier / La Martineche. 3 juin – St-Marc-à-Loubaud : Lavaud-Gelade ; St-Dizier-Leyrenne : Murat. 4 juin – St-Marc-à-Loubaud : Lavaud-Gelade, Moulin-de-Canque ; Gentioux-Pigerolles : Paillier. 5 juin – St-Marc-à-Loubaud : Lavaud-Gelade. 11 juin – Thauron. 14 juin – St-Hilaire-le-Château ; Vidaillat – Cherchaleix ; Le-Monteil-au-Vicomte : Gué-Chaumeix. 27 juin – Bosmoreau-les-Mines ; St-Dizier-Leyrenne : Bost-de-Ville. 1er juillet – Vallières : Vaux, Gour-de-Vaux. 11 juillet – St-Priest-Taurion. 10 août – Gentioux-Pigerolles : Paillier, Villemoneix. 18 août – Gentioux-Pigerolles : Le Luc, Senoueix ; Royère-de-Vassivière : Combe-au-Moulin. 23 septembre – Châtelus-le-Marcheix : Chauverne-Neyre, Le Maginier. 15 octobre – Chavanat : Meymanat. 6 décembre – Châtelus-le-Marcheix. 28 décembre : Gentioux-Pigerolles : Senoueix ; Royère-de-Vassivière : Lavaud-Gelade. – 2007 – 13 janvier – Châtelus-le-Marcheix : La Roche-Talamy. 2 mars – Les Billanges : Les Lilas, Virareix. 30 avril – Châtelus-le-Marcheix : Ponchale. 24 juin – Châtelus-le-Marcheix : Montsergue. 18 août – Gentioux-Pigerolles : Paillier. 21 décembre – St-Priest-Taurion : Chauvant. – 2008 – 2 mai – Vidaillat : Cherchaleix. 7 juin – St-Laurent-les-Eglises : Pont-du-Dognon. 27 août – St-Laurent-les-Eglises. 13 septembre – St-Laurent-les-Eglises : Pont-du-Dognon.

Cédric Peyronnet / kdi dctb 146 [e] – composed April 2009
Copyright: SACEM, 2009 / www.ingeos.org

Field Recording Series by Gruenrekorder
Gruenrekorder / Germany / 2010 / Gr 078 / LC 09488

Reviews

Richard Allen | The Silent Ballet

Sound recording and sound art may be related, but they are not interchangeable. Cédric Peyronnet is a sound artist; he layers and rearranges field recordings to form a greater narrative. In this instance, he maps the sonic environment of France’s Taurion Valley: birds, brooks and occasional traffic. (Very few spaces in the world are truly immune from human interruption.) The most exciting segments of the single hour-long piece are those in which the water sounds move to the fore: bubbling, rippling and raining. The attentive listener begins to anticipate these cacaphonous passages like choruses, regarding the quieter, avian interludes like verses. The piece is somewhat diluted by late repetition – a third downpour would have been more effective if attached to its brethren – but the recording as a whole is a success due to its crispness and its intentional distancing from placidity.

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Richard Pinnell | The Watchful Ear

Hmm, right, so tonight’s CD is another fifty-four minute of field recordings, made outside, in the countryside, primarily around water in the Tourion region of France. The disc is a release on the Gruenrekorder label by Cedric Peyronnet that carries the somewhat unwieldy title kdi dctb 146[e]. Now, regular readers will know what I am going to say here. Yes, more hydrophones… It is probably unfair for me to single out Peyronnet’s disc here as one example of what seems to me to be an absolute deluge of similar albums over the last two or three years, but there is so much about this fifty-four minute recording, as pleasant a recording as it is, that I have heard so many times before of late. The disc contains a lot of nicely detailed recordings of rushing, trickling and torrential water, masses of birdsong, passing aircraft, the odd boat engine revving up, all nice sounds yes, but all sounds I seem to hear almost weekly on one CD or another.

I wrote a review of Eric LaCasa’s excellent W2 album for last month’s edition of The Wire. It wouldn’t be good practice for me to republish the text here, but the Herbal label have posted it up here. I mention this because LaCasa’s release is an example, and a very good one, of how field recordings can be used, layered, as with Peyronnet’s disc here, and generally thought through and composed to create music that holds a sense of narrative and drama, rather than merely presenting an audio picture of a place that sounds very beautiful, but quite frankly also sounds like a lot of other beautiful places that have appeared on CDs of late. It is unfair of me to try and suggest that Peyronnet should have attempted something different with his music, that the straight audio picture he paints, albeit one that uses layering techniques to shift from one image to another, isn’t really enough any more. I can fully understand why, if you live within, or visit a beautiful place that you would wish to capture its sounds and present them as an audio snapshot for others, far away, to enjoy. The process is in many ways no different to photography. However as we can all only look at some many photos of rivers and trees before needing something new in them to keep us from getting bored, this kind of CD of field recordings (and its not just me is it? there really is a lot of music out there like this right now?) needs something more to transcend “something pleasant to listen to” status and really begin to inspire as a piece of music that can stand repeated plays.

In places, kdi dctb 146[e] does make the hairs stand on end, such as one period when the sound of rushing water builds to a torrent that almost jumps out of the speakers before fading to a pattering of light rainfall, but overall these moments don’t come often enough for me personally. I guess the question I am raising here is one of simple representation versus creative composition. I seem these days to need to hear the sounds pulled from the environment to be used to construct something new, material to be moulded and positioned by the composer rather than just presented as fact. To some degree Peyronnet does do this, the closing moments of the album feature a recording made (I think) on a small boat, and we hear its strained whining engine burn a single line across the recording until it is faded out for quieter, murkier sounds to bring the disc to a close. There are parts here and there that do escape the pastoral and show the composer’s signature, but they are a little too thin on the ground, and the overall sensation of the album is one of audio landscaping (Peyronnet mentions soundmapping in his brief liners) rather than composed expression.

So this is a personal thing, but unless the subject matter is truly fantastic or particularly original, I think these days I need to hear more than just nicely recorded, finely detailed sound pictures of birdsong and bubbling water. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with kdi dctb 146[e] whatsoever, it is in itself really quite beautiful, and Peyronnet’s intentions for his music probably bear no resemblance to my expectations, but I have to say that I would choose the carefully constructed drama and explosion of the LaCasa release over this one. Perhaps a decade ago, when quality portable digital recording was harder to come by, and this kind of CD didn’t seem to appear so often then I would be appreciating it far more. Perhaps these days we are just spoilt for choice.

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Oliver Laing | Cyclic Defrost

This one-track environmental recording by sound artist Cédric Peyronnet (otherwise known as Toy.bizzare) documents a long running ‘sound mapping’ project. Somewhere in the vicinity of the town of Limoges in South-west France, the Taurion Valley carries on existing in reality, but now resides in Cédric Peyronnet’s extensive oeuvre of phonography, soundscapes and related environmental recordings. Further information about this project can be found here.

kdi dctb 146 [e] summons forth idyllic images of grassy meadows, sinuous streams and a delicately interconnected biosystem that maintains its specific rhythm in an unknowing defiance to the frenetic nature of our own. That’s not to say that there are no human-derived sounds contained within – the first sound that enters in is an aeroplane moving across the stereo field from left to right. There’s also the unmistakable thrum of a two-stroke outboard motor towards the end of the piece as Cedric pilots his way along the edges of the riparian environment. Predominantly, the sounds on kdi dctb 146 [e] are avian and aquatic, with the odd bovine and heavy traffic captured in order to paint an accurate aural picture of this Gallic valley. The sheer vitality and diversity of the sounds of the aquatic environment are a highlight, but possibly a ‘natural break’ (as they say in the Tour de France) may be in order prior to setting out.

Superficially, I was immediately reminded of the mighty Chain Reaction label and their short-lived metal box CD cases from the late 90s, (which were superseded due to a cracking issue within the CD itself). No worries about this occurring with this release for the German Gruenrekorder label – the CD fits snuggly into a faux-velour spindle…anyway, enough object fetishism, as the CDR version has now sold out at source.

kdi dctb 146 [e] was originally composed as a piece for four channels. Reduced to stereo, the three dimensional intent of the recording is still very apparent. I would recommend that you avail yourself of some decent (preferably Germanic) headphones in order to fully immerse yourself in the subtle rhythms of the Taurion Valley. Active headphone listening brought out the hypnotic beauty at the centre of this recording, whilst as background music competing with the hum of urban life, kdi dctb 146 [e] barely registered.

The liner notes refer to a concept hinting towards French composer Luc Ferrari, that of “à la recherche du Presque rien”, or more prosaically “in the search for almost nothing”. Abandoning preconceptions of musicality and experimentation before entering Cédric Peyronnet’s interpretation of the Taurion valley may provide the committed and observant listener with a delightful distraction from their workaday life.

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Ron Schepper | textura

Issued in a silver case as part of Gruenrekorder’s Field Recording Series, kdi dctb 146 [e] is a fifty-five-minute single-track work by sound artist Cédric Peyronnet. Though originally composed as four-channel piece, it’s still effective when heard in the recording’s standard stereo format. The work in question is the product of three years of sound recording in and around the Taurion river valley in France that allows the listener to vicariously experience the location. Natural sounds appear throughout, starting with an overhead plane, then birds chirps, cricket sounds, and buzzing flies, but—more than anything else—water, with some variations of it surfacing as burbling river sounds, drizzling rain, and crashing waves. During one peaceful interlude, a cow’s moo is heard in the distance until a river plunge wipes out any trace of above-surface sounds and replaces it with the aggressive churn of water. Loud and quiet passages alternate, with traffic noise, bird caws, and fire crackle emerging during one particularly evocative section. One could create for oneself a soundwalk from the provided materials, so vivid and plentiful are the sounds presented. In doing so, one could imagine oneself cruising down the river in a little boat, taking in the sights and sounds on the adjoining banks whilst occasionally escaping from the heat with a brief plunge and later bracing oneself for the deluge of an oncoming rainstorm.

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Brian Olewnick | Just outside

A multi-layered field recording done in and around water sources in the Taurion Valley in western France. Water indeed predominates, backed up heartily by birds, closed out by boat engines. There’s more air in play than in the Bick which gets a thankful nod of appreciation from me as well as a more natural ebb and flow, largely with regard to dynamics. But..that’s pretty much it. It’s pleasant; one would like to have been there, listening, lying on the banks but–and perhaps this is a problem with the genre in general–one would be able to choose what to concentrate on, to linger with as well as, I’m certain, actually hearing more. Not particularly Peyronnet’s fault, but I’m beginning to think that unless one happens to be in tune with the aesthetic judgment of the recorder/assembler, one’s left with the nagging feeling, in relatively straightforward examples like this, that one would rather have done it oneself than necessarily accept the choices made by the recorder.

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Frans de Waard | VITAL WEEKLY

[…] Cedric Peyronnet, also known as Toy Bizarre (but here on a rare occasion under his own name), releases a series of 3″CDRs on his own Kaon where he invites people to work with sounds he recorded at the Thaurion valley in France, but for this work on Gruenrekorder he allows himself to use his own material. Originally a four channel piece, but here reduced to stereo. The use of river sounds may work a bit on the bladder, but Peyronnet knows how to construct a fine piece of music and there is also the sounds of birds and insects. This too stands in the best Ferrari tradition of a natural soundscape, and Peyronnet brings an almost sunny feel to a grey day. I have no idea what the weather conditions were when these sounds were recorded, but it made me wanting to pack up my suitcase and go to a sunny place – and that is a rare thing! An excellent fifty-five minute piece of soundscaping. (FdW)

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