The first 2009 release for French The Swarming label is the trio of saxophonist Jean-Luc Guionnet, and electronic artists Eric La Casa and Philip Samartzis, using unusual procedures and investigations to create impressive and dynamic sonic journeys.
"For this, the first release on Swarming label, Eric La Casa, Philip Samartzis and Jean-Luc Guionnet recorded Soleil D'Artifice in 2007 to investigate all kinds of ends in improvisation and in experimental music. Their meeting was in the interest of the possibilities in sound mechanics, some areas previously known, and some bound to be discovered (among themselves) for the first time. Listening to the disc I've come to appreciate it as a lab experiment played out for the ears - scientists seeking new links in dynamics more for the sake of the experience and without two shits given for the written documentation of their findings.
As if just listening weren't enough... For all the sequencing of prepared material, this is a strange recording which, on a strictly aesthetic level, will be at odds with any assumption of the music's responsibility to "say something". Almost immediately we find ourselves navigating Guionnet's fragmental gestures (clean tones, brief and sporadic from the alto sax, also amplified in such a way as to intermittently "play" feedback) and La Casa's and Samartzis' field recordings, as if in a chaotic storm inside which is no visibility or sense of heading. The only recourse is to get lost and adrift in the proceedings, awash in the contrast and in the occasional merging of complementary sounds. Among these are glitchy patch-driven wedges of laptop noise, industrial site alarms and human voice.
The first track is built primarily from field recordings, with electronics and saxophone providing occasional accents - it's the most hyper-communicative of the three pieces, at once lacking direction but cohesive in its horizontal activity. Relentless but perfectly engaging, it is. Samartzis and Guionnet appear at the fore of the second piece, the tamest on the disc, segmental in nature with longer thematic stretches and more seamless transitions. La Casa and Samartzis are sensitive in the employment of their microphones, while rejecting nothing - even wind noise (customarily unwanted residual noise) finds perfect placement, the trio craftily incorporating the accidental within 45 minutes of music that is nearly saturated with unique source recordings. Once all three pieces are digested and considered, an abstract ghost of a theme takes shape.
It's difficult to say why or how such contrasting sounds fit so well together - and it certainly has to do with their placement against one another - but then I believe contrast was the more concrete of the goals when the trio met on a single day to make this recording. It's barrage without bombardment, experimentation without whimsy."-Al, Bagatallen