Mathias DelplanquePasseports

Passeports

CrĂłnica 048~2010 CD

CD sold out

Release date: 3 February 2010

Tracklist

  1. Passeport 1 (Nantes) (08:48)
  2. Passeport 2 (Lille) (07:24)
  3. Passeport 3 (Dieppe) (08:37)
  4. Passeport 4 (Nantes) (01:08)
  5. Passeport 5 (Lille) (04:47)
  6. Passeport 6 (Nantes) (07:02)
  7. Passeport 7 (Nantes) (12:35)

Passeports is composed from various field-recordings realized in transport-related locations across France: train stations, harbors, parking lots and other areas of transit, weaved into dense ambient compositions. Passeport 3 (Dieppe) further includes recordings made in a call center in New Delhi, not a place of physical travel but, while operating mostly to Europe and the USA, nevertheless a place of transport. These recordings were the whole of the raw material used in the composition of this album, and were then themselves transported to Mathias's home, where they were played back into the spaces of the various rooms, so that the mix between the broadcast sounds and domestic noises would itself be recorded to become the final version of the tracks, something that is particularly clear in Passeport 7 (Nantes), the track that concludes the CD. Passeports is a work that questions the relations between space and music, between the sound and its space, between the music and its place.

Mathias Delplanque (born in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in 1973) is a composer, a performer, a music critic, an author of sound installation and the founding member of several musical ensembles. He lives and works in Nantes (France).

His work as a composer started in 1998 as he graduated from the Fine Arts school and decided to put an end to his sculpture activity to turn towards sound creation. He since released several records and collaborated with musicians from various points of the musical spectrum (Rob Mazurek, Steve Argüelles, Myra Melford, Shahzad Ismaïly, Ghislain Poirier, Julien Jacob, Daniel Givens, Black Sifichi…). His installation works are frequently shown in galleries and art centers, and he regularly performs on stage, solo or accompanied by other musicians.

Mathias' sound work takes on several main lines and develops through different identities: Lena, Stensil, Bidlo, The Floating Roots Orchestra… or Mathias Delplanque — his own name being just another heteronym. All these projects form a complex ensemble in which every new element is a response to other previous propositions (a track Inside an album becoming the point of departure for another album, the same track being approached differently on separate projects etc…).

The works done under his own name all directly deal with the question of the relation between space and music — «Ma chambre quand je n’y suis pas» (My bedroom when I’m away), «L’Inondation» (The Flood), «La Plinthe» (The Baseboard), «Sol» (Ground), «Le Pavillon Témoin» (The Show House)… Whether developed on records, performances or installations, whether strictly based on field recordings or containing instrumental parts, these works all question the relation between the sound and its space, between the music and its place.

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