Gilonis, Bill Chantale Laplante

Zurich - Bamberg

Label: Ad Hoc Records Country: USA

"Bill Gilonis and Chantale Laplante worked on Zürich-Bamberg intermittently for three years. The CD comprises a series of pieces that fall loosely into a category that could be called "electro-acoustic Hörspiel." However, with Bill in Zurich and Chantale based firstly in Bamberg, Germany and later in Montreal, Canada, it was difficult to find a way of collaborating by conventional means. But, by ping-ponging audio file CDs between these cities they managed to develop a practical, and in some ways advantageous, composition and recording strategy. For this project conventional instrumentation has been virtually abandoned. What we hear on these recordings - collaged and sometimes manipulated via processing technology - is street noise, household clatter, fragments of radio, close-miked objects, etc. By and large the pieces are constructed from precisely the sounds that our ears are constantly and automatically filtering out; but by orchestrating these sounds into pieces to be listened to - as opposed to heard - listeners are introduced to a radically personal world.

Bill Gilonis co-founded the gritty experimental rock group The Work in 1980 with Tim Hodgkinson. The group was active intermittently until 1993, recording four albums and touring extensively, including in Russia, Japan, Finland, Yugoslavia and Switzerland. He has also worked as a producer, sound engineer and/or musician with (among others): Robert Wyatt, News from Babel (Chris Cutler, Lindsay Cooper, Zeena Parkins, Dagmar Krause), David Thomas, Peter Blegvad, Ut, the Lindsay Cooper Film Music Group, Hail and The Hat Shoes (with Catherine Jauniaux, Tom Cora, Charles Hayward and others).

Chantale Laplante's musical journey has been a unique one: with a background in classical and jazz piano, she was a member of experimental and pop music groups, later followed by academic studies in composition (University of Montreal), including private tuition with Francis Dhomont and Jonathan Harvey (UK)."-Ad Hoc Records