"Resonances manifestes is a comprovised music piece based on a sound score composed of field recordings from autonomous demonstrations that shook the streets of Montreal in the recent years. The piece can be understood as a sound study on how the ambient sounds can participate actively to the gain of consistency of the moments of community and how some musical processes can orient the experimentation of new ways to gather in the event. The process of research-creation underlying the piece involved a sound study on the acoustic ecologies of demonstrations, the composition of a sound score expressing different affective tonalities of these events, and the organization of a series of training workshops on the collective perception of sounds.

Resonances manifestes is the musical expression of a project of research-creation at the confluence of music, philosophy and politics, aiming to understand how sound and music contribute to the (trans)formation of affective communities, understood as the common becoming of the multiple bodies (living or not, human or not) taken in an intensive field of affective resonance.

The remixes have been created by sound artists of Montreal in order to compose creatively with the distance and the impossibility of the gatherings that have affected the project recently."-Creative Sources

"Devenir-ensemble is a collective of musicians from Montreal who describe themselves as "working in comprovisation around the formation of affective communities, understood as the common becoming of the multiple bodies (human or not, living or not) taken in a field of affective resonance." Exploring, that is, the ways in which sound might influence and alter gatherings of people. The initiative of Hubert Gendron-Blais, whose other project ce qui nous traverse we covered back in in February, the project could therefore be viewed as a hybrid form of creation and research, a point at the intersection of music, politics and philosophy which looks to better understand the relationship between all three.

Résonances manifestes, the latest Devenir-ensemble release on Cuchabata Records, highlights just how evocative and ambitious this style can be. A 'comprovised' piece, it is based around field recordings from a variety of protests and demonstrations on the streets on Montreal across recent years, the crowd sounds followed and elevated by jazz and ambient styles. Gendron-Blais (baritone electric guitar) is joined by Andrea Prochazka Mercier (saxophone), David Dugas Dion (drums), Elyze Venne-Deshaies (clarinet), Joel Gorrie (cello), Joel E. Mason (bass guitar), Marilène Provencher-Leduc (transverse flute), Mélanie Cullin (accordion), Paul Zakarivan (electric guitar) and Philippe Blouin (electric guitar), a group varied and plastic enough to express the gamut of emotions and energies recorded on the ground.

Take the difference between the urgent opening of 'Mouvement 2 - Effet de masse' with the sense of latent movement captured on 'Mouvement 4 - Imminence de l'affrontement'. Different events have different tonalities, and even within a gathering the tone changes as it swells and recedes. The disorientating chaos of 'Mouvement 5 - Heurts' can not last for ever, even the most fervent scenes unwinding into the sweeping quiet of 'Mouvement 9 - Retour à la normale'. And likewise the bubbling anticipation seen on 'Mouvement 3 - Échos des clameurs' is inherently transient, like the strange moments at a show before the band have taken to the stage, where individual voices can still be heard above the general murmur. Before each person is subsumed into the crowd."

This album has been reviewed on our magazine:


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