CD – Kalerne

The sounds emitted by bats in Taiwan may seem, at first glance, to be a decidedly unorthodox topic for a composer whose main activities are focused on concrete music, improvisation, electroacoustic composition and phonography. However, Yannick Dauby is not new to sound installations and audio documentaries. The French musician is also attracted to field recordings and echolocation phenomena. Indeed, the particular psychoacoustic characteristics of audio can give rise to deeper considerations. This concerns both the quality of sounds and the mental suggestions that such recordings can trigger when combined and processed with the use of analogue electronics and digital processes. In this case the infamous Blippoo box player Rob Hordijk, the Sidrax organ played by Peter Blasser and other modular synthesizers are all heard. “Echoes as Messengers is a kind of domestic sound installation”, says Dauby, who worked on the project together with the National Taiwan University students and with the crew behind the blog chiroptera. These are visionaries and experimenters accustomed to poetic auditory investigations and site-specific abstractions. What seems particularly relevant in this release under the Kalerne label is the minimalist achievement, the interplay between what is recorded and what is added, with the tiniest added touches and scientific calibrations of the volume. There is no particular camouflage at play but rather a taste for the integration and juxtaposition of different elements. There is no manual for the field-recordist, everyone interprets the myriad of combinations and possible approaches differently. However, a fixed aim is to produce emotions, a tangible, conceptual and physical strength, and Yannick Dauby is impeccable in this.

 

Yannick Dauby – Echoes as Messenger