pierre gerard / press
2011 // pierre gerard ENVIRONMENT & gesture
pierre gerard ENVIRONMENT & gesture
3leaves (hu) : 3L009 | cd |
Pierre Gerard and Andy Graydon's tape release from earlier this year saw a long distance sound exchange deploying themes of polarity and homeward migration. Gerard's take on the themes saw an ultra-minimalist approach – as he often deploys – that resulted in a nice piece of hushed concrete-drone music. As minimal as that piece was, it sounded tumultuous in comparison to ENVIRONMENT & gesture.
On their own, the three tracks that make up the album give little to no reward for the listener, elapsing as lackluster environmental backdrops: a water droplet here, a rock thud there. After the 20 minute opener the sound of a stream is introduced, which slightly livens things, though barely. But Gerard hasn't just presented an album of boring field recordings, his intentions are far more earnest.
From his perspective these recordings are the product of seamless improvisations, where the sounds of objects and instruments are integrated by the "performer" into an environmental soundscape by complimenting it as opposed to dominating over it. Rightly so, Gerard choose nearly silent locations to perform these passive improv sessions where even the slightest of movements likely had the potential to impede on his vision. In these recording situations discipline and restraint become important factors, and although the outcome isn't the most engaging, there is much revealed in the artist's intentions and in the sound work itself if one can spend time with it. Yes, this just might win you over. Recommended.
13.11.11
adrian > scrapyard forecast
Pierre Gerard is a master of the barely there brand of minimalism and a firm favourite here at Wonderful Wooden Reasons. His music is a perfect example of a truly ambient soundworld. His, often seemingly commonplace, sounds are so delicately positioned that it's all too easy to forget that there is a seedee playing and to thoroughly believe that these sounds are part of your immediate everyday environment.
This is music that augments on a level of subtlety that I find deliciously insidious. It spoils you for more overt sounds, they become cloying and bombastic, and leaves you craving the delicate fragility of these compositions.
10 November 2011
ian > wonderful wooden reasons
Belgian sound artist works with objects and electronic devices. He has been active since 2007 releasing CD-R's, CD's and a cassette for the imprints White Line Editions, Koyuki, Dragon's Eye Recordings and 3Leases, among others.
Drops of water are the main sound in this record which is electronically manipulated. The minimal aesthetic on this CD is sometimes close to silence and bits of tiny drops configure an special rhythm.
El artista sonoro belga trabaja con objetos y dispositivos electrónicos. Ha estado activo desde 2007 editando CD-R's, CD's y un casete para los sellos White Line Editions, Koyuki, Dragon's Eye Recordings y 3Leases, entre otros.
Gotas de agua es el principal sonido en este disco y que son electrónicamente manipuladas. La estética minimal de este CD es a veces cercana al silencio y pequeñas gotas configuran un especial ritmo sonoro.
domingo, 13 noviembre 2011
guillermo escudero > loop
ENVIRONMENT and Gesture (3LEAVES 3L009) is the new release from Pierre Gerard , a Frenchman who is making a form of very gentle intervention in our daily surroundings with his near-imperceptible sonic actions, a strategy which to some extent aligns him with Jeph Jerman. His two main objectives are (a) to produce improvisations using common objects, not in the sense that he “dominates” the object like an imperialist invader seizing handfuls of sand, but rather to arrive at an integrated and harmonious situation where man and nature are brought one step closer to happy co-existence. As to (b), this concerns the more metaphysical ambition where he hopes his work will have an effect on time itself, causing a “soft impression” on the listener such that time starts to slide past in a more gentle and manageable manner, presumably a welcome antidote to the pressures of modern urban life where time has been sliced and parcelled into rigid divisions that suit the capitalist agenda. Gerard attempts the above by situating himself in a determinedly rural setting (water, stone and air are his materials) and creating gentle sounds which may involve dropping stones into a pond or engaging with a stream of water in some sympathetic way. The long 20-minute track contains such sounds occurring in sproadic intervals with lots of silence, and it feels isolated, stark, minimal beyond belief. However by the end of the album the external sounds of the environment also begin to appear, and help to put the work into context. I have reproduced the exact typographical rendering of the title of this release, which clearly stresses the element which Gerard regards as the more important of the two in his symbiotic relationship.
november 5, 2011
ed pinsent > the sound projector
In the moment when silence and its weak ruptures become unbearable for a man to sustain, a music based on those very characteristics is equally problematic. When an artist works with micro-elements such as Belgian Pierre Gerard, the challenge is that of pushing a listener to find new implications within acoustic milieus exploited to the bone. ENVIRONMENT & Gesture is a three-part piece whose linearity is somewhat displacing; even more puzzling is the positive reaction of this reviewer in front of natural components – mostly water and faraway environmental whispers, with the addition of an unspecified “instrument” – that have been used thousands of times before by other practitioners of the same area, with increasingly ho-hum results. However, I have come to trust Gerard pretty much throughout the recent past. His method cancels the ego completely, privileging the macrocosmic aspects of an introspective solitude. Accordingly, the work manages to involve to a point of complete participation “inside” the rarefied messages coming from the speakers. Despite the absence of surprises, this record is characterized by a wealth of recondite signals – wrapped in an awful lot of implicit meanings – transforming the hush that follows the end of the album into a deafening dearth of questions, as if all what we needed to know was already printed somewhere in the countryside's scents.
september 27, 2011
massimo ricci > touching extremes
After a couple of CDRs and download only releases, Pierre Gerard now moves into releasing his first real CD, thanks to the advantages some pressing plants offer to do smaller editions. This one is limited to 250 copies. Gerard is a computer musician of the more minimal kind - perhaps: the most minimal kind. He has three pieces here, all improvisations of which he says "i would like to improvise with the most minimal element, which shares our everyday life each minute when we are there. this improvisation does come in a domination of the one on the other, but in an integration. hoping that the sound which I produce would have been able to be without my participation". I left in the lowercase, so that you have an idea. The english could have used some work (but then: usually mine too), but its clear: Gerard works with a limited amount of sound. Objects in the first piece, and instruments in the second and third piece. The 'objects' are the drips of water, perhaps on a small variety of surfaces. Instruments are even harder to define here. In the third piece - the 'fullest' sound-wise - we hear also rain and/or static hiss and the water is now in a constant downfall, which started out in the second piece, but then its very hard to recognize many instruments at all. Quite a strange release, quite conceptual I think and also at the same time quite a beautiful release, very contemplative. Play loud or play soft - this is very much grounded in the work of microsound, and perhaps as such as not the most original one, but it's all done with great care. (FdW)
frans de waard > vital weekly (number 798)
2011 // pierre gerard and andy graydon : untitled, (magnetisms)
pierre gerard - I: orientation (magnetite crystals) 20:01
andy graydon - II: refrain
1. givens 9:24
2. returns 10:48
edition 100, fold out print by ben owen
(cassette c40)
winds measure recordings (us) : wm21 | cassette |
Another magnificently packed tape, this time a split between the Belgium based Pierre Gerard and German sound artist Andy Graydon. As the story goes, Winds Measure commissioned these gentlemen to produce a work specifically for cassette. The two answered the call with magnetism , a theme that is as fundamental to migratory birds as it is to the functionality of analog tape. Gerard and Graydon began planning their work while focusing on two phenomena associated with magnetism: homeward migration and polarity, eventually settling on a process in which each artist would send the other a recording from their respective home environments to process and compose with – Graydon sending a recording of bamboo in the forests outside his childhood home on Maui, Hawaii and Gerard sending a recording of a wooden table located outside a house in the French village Espère.
The A side, Orientation (Magnetite Crystals) , composed by Gerard, fits nicely alongside the minimalist extremes of previous Winds Measure productions – Richard Garet's L'avenir and Jason Kahn and Takefumi Naoshima's In a Room come to mind. The piece is glacial, coalescing as a motionless stretch of time over its 20 minute duration. Gerard's micro-movements of sound are often listless, though occasionally they become spring loaded, vibrating through the speaker cones for a split second before they are gone, a new sound taking their place. Very consistent and a great work. Graydon's side is for the most part equally as enjoyable save for perhaps a few over zealous moments, though he makes up for it in the lovely ambient sections peppered throughout. A fine job that strikes me as easier to fall into than Gerard's piece, though ultimately not as rewarding. Again, a worthwhile release from Winds Measure, and if you haven't done so already invest some time in this under-appreciated label.
http://scrapyardforecast.blogspot.com/2011/04/two-cassettes-from-winds-measure.html
An interesting conceptual connectivity underscores this collaborative outing between Pierre Gerard and Andy Graydon. Having been asked by Winds Measure to create a work for cassette tape, the pair fixed their attention on the material dimension of tape technology, and, recognizing that the magnetism associated with the medium also plays a part in other magnetic systems (such as the navigation of migrating birds and the earth's polarity), each sent the other a field recording associated with his home environment for the other to work with.
Credited to Gerard, side one's "Orientation (Magnetite Crystals)" documents the manipulations applied by Gerard to the recording sent by Graydon, specifically a recording of a field recording of bamboo in the forests outside Graydon's childhood home on Maui,
Hawaii——not that one would be easily able to extricate the contributions made by Graydon to the twenty-minute meditation, which presents itself as a sparsely populated field of spectral micro-sounds (clicks, whirrs, rustlings, etc.) and textures where
extended passages of hiss are as much a part of the piece as the punctuating elements. Side B features a two-part piece by Graydon called "Refrain" that documents Gerard's manipulations of a wooden table outside a house in the French village Espère. What results is a rather more active conglomeration of textures that suggests intermixtures of animal life forms and industrial sounds——even if such evocations are purely illusory. Regardless, the wealth of detail presented on side B——whistling tones, swirls, scrapes, and textural noise of one unidentifiable kind or another——keeps one listening throughout its twenty-minute duration. The collaborative project, which would be of interest primarily to devotees of textural sound art, nevertheless offers an engaging exploration of sound (trans)migrations.
april 2011
> textura
An obscurity here. An split tape, with one piece by Pierre Gerard and one by Andy Graydon and in one way or another I think this all has to do with 'magnetic' sound waves, music recorded on cassettes, rather than anything digitally. According to the website this is a collaborative work. Gerard was reviewed before in Vital Weekly, and his twenty minute piece is called 'Orientation (Magnetite Crystals)'. Highly obscured sounds, which are not easy to recognize: "Andy sent a recording of bamboo in the forests outside his childhood home on Maui, Hawaii. Pierre recorded "a wooden table located outside a house in the French village Espère. The table is directed towards the horizon which becomes bluish". They could have fooled me. Its very hard to say what kind of "processing" took place on the Gerard side: lots of silence and an occasional bump in the road. At one point a more continuos electronic (?) sound comes in, irregularly. Odd but compelling. Graydon's side is a more continuos sound affair. He seems to apply methods of recording and re-recording similar sound events and pick them up in the same room: say a version of 'I'm Sitting In A Room', but then for acoustic sounds and collaged together, rather than presented one after another. Personally I preferred this side to Gerard's piece, I must admit. Quite intense, lo-fi scattered magnetic fields, rusty to the core, and an excellent example of fine almost drone like music.(FdW)
frans de waard > vital weekly (number 770)
2010 // pierre gerard : perspective, en cherchant le chevreuil
pierre gerard : perspective, en cherchant le chevreuil (to gus van sant)
mastered by bernhard günter
trente oiseaux (de) : toc1003 | flac |
For thirty minutes, Pierre Gérard puts the listeners in direct confrontation with the variability of perception, on a merely physical/aural level and in sheer introspective terms. There is no scheme to mentally clutch to feel “secure”; no recourse to categorizations such as “silence” or “minimalism”. Just the asymmetrical concurrence of variously dyed frequencies and acoustic wrinkles that our ears may recognize as familiar derivations (faint suggestions of reed instruments, field recordings), or irretraceable hums that surprise, embrace and occasionally overwhelm, as it happens from the third minute of the fourth chapter, a section that left me aurally unbalanced for a few seconds afterwards. If you start “running after the sounds”, hopelessly trying to anticipate their design amidst the meaninglessness of a life's moment, disappointment lurks behind the corner. Expecting to understand an “architecture” here is a futile exercise which, needless to say, I had immediately implemented with meagre satisfaction. At one point, the explanation came all of a sudden. These are some of that transitory instance's fundamental components – “any moment's music”, if so preferred. Attributing deeper values or implications is dead wrong. The only clear thing is that they exist, ready to vibrate in sympathy within a given microcosm – environmental or corporeal. Mix this record with the whispering airstreams, the cheeping birds and the ricocheting whoosh of a distant town while lying semi-asleep on a couch, and the result is as near to cosmic exactitude as a person might wish. And if the hush of a sealed room is favoured, allow them to adjust your internal resonance rate without fighting.
may 29, 2011
massimo ricci >> touching extremes