Allison Cameron

Allison Cameron: CD Review: Pierre Bastien, Visions of Doing (western vinyl: WEST053)

2012-01-24T17:10:00.000-05:00

Allison Cameron: CD Review: Pierre Bastien, Visions of Doing (western vinyl: WEST053)

The Allison Cameron Band CD release May 15, 2010

2010-05-09T15:51:00.009-04:00

The Allison Cameron Band

Going

Going is only ever from A to B.
But where are these places?

If I am going to draw a circle, I am gone before the circle is begun.
A is the moment at which any semblance of intention comes into existence, unless I am to draw the circle unintentionally.
If the circle is to be drawn unintentionally, A is the moment that the chain of events (leading to the drawing) begins.
In either case (and in every case), A can easily be shown to be the beginning of time.
I arrive at B as the pen touches the paper, to draw.
If the circle is never completed, then I was not going to draw a circle, despite the fact that I may have already reached B.
It's as if I was to go to a friend's house and being told, after knocking on the door for an hour, that she no longer lives there.
I reach the house but I am not "there".
C is the closure of the circle.
We don't go there.
Its existence or non-existence indicates whether or not we have in fact arrived at the place to which we thought we were going in the first place.

If I am going to love someone forever, then C is at the imaginary end of all future beyond the point at which my love begins.
But I am gone long before that love takes form.
And I will never know if I have actually reached my destination (except imaginarily).

Importantly:
If I am going to stay here, then I am gone long before I decide to stay.
If I am going to stop going places, then I am gone long before I decide to start stopping.

I hope you will enjoy the musical directions traversed on this wonderful new record by The Allison Cameron Band.
- Ryan Driver

Book Review: S:ON

2010-01-15T18:03:00.003-05:00

S : ON
Le son de l’art contemporain canadien
Sound in Contemporary Canadian Art
(bi-lingual texts)

Edited by Nicole Gingras

In 2003 Éditions Artexte published S:ON a book with accompanying CD that speaks to various facets of sound and visual arts in a Canadian contemporary art context. This well researched publication grew out of a residency held by curator /art critic Nicole Gingras in 2002 at the Montréal based contemporary art information centre Artexte. As Ms. Gingras points out in her introduction ‘the ground to be covered, or rather skimmed, was quite vast, with no shortage of singular examples.”

Generally speaking, the research done is excellent and the context of some of the articles is curious. S:ON endeavours to create "…a forum for discussion based on the act of listening,” and includes 18 interdisciplinary artists from across Canada involved in a variety of audio practices.

The book is divided into four sections: Penser le son/Thinking through sound; Volumes and Surfaces; Espaces d’écoute; and, Modulations - installation body and machine body.
Thinking through sound includes a lovely, poetic (yet brief!) purview of the life and work of composer/sound artist Pierre Mercure written by Raymond Gervais. In it Gervais recounts the historically piquant times of 1948 Montréal when the manifesto Refus Global was published. Author Paul-Émile Borduas and Les Automatistes had a decisive influence on Mercure’s artistic consciousness and consequently his predilection for mixed media and involvement in the much later Fluxus movement. Volumes et Surfaces includes fascinating articles by Christof Migone discussing space and silence in his article: Volume – a history of unsound art, Michèle Waquant discusses her acoustically rich work Impression Débâcle where sound and visuals mesh into a kind of aural cinematic landscape; and, sound designer Colin Griffiths (collaborator with Rodney Graham and Stan Douglas among others), discusses acoustics, architecture, and the audience member. From Listening Spaces we read about Nicolas Reeves installation Le Jardin des Ovelyniers where a glass aquarium houses five oranges each with two electrodes implanted. The variable voltage current eventually results in a ‘chant des oranges.’ Most interesting from the final section Modulations is the triptych of interviews conducted by Nicole Gingras via email with improviser Alexandre St.-Onge, visual artist Jean-Pierre Gauthier and multi-media artist James Partaik. The first three questions for each interviewee are identical and result in some radically different answers, especially that of Alex St.-Onge. He states frankly that self-expression in musical improvisation is something that disgusts him.

The CD portion of the book has also left much to the imagination. With 15 different artists represented it is jam-packed with both excerpts and complete sound pieces. Interestingly, only two of the artists with texts in the book are represented on the CD. The disc includes works by sound artists Pierre-André Arcand, Diane Landry, Rita McKeough, Daniel Olson and Rober Racine among others. Highlights of the CD include: Hugh Le Caine’s Mouth Cavity Oscillator, Martin Tétreault’s Citation, Daniel Olson’s Soundtrack, and Emmanuel Madan’s Soundwalk through “Incredibly Soft Sounds.” Bios of all of the artists on the CD are included in the book.

For both research purposes and engaging articles, S:ON is a book/cd to be read, seen, heard and appreciated. It leaves much for the imagination to ponder and initiate further investigation, reading, creation.

…en particulier grâce à Hélène Kay.

CD re-release of 4'33"/0'00" by John Cage.

2010-01-15T16:56:00.020-05:00

4’33”
0’00” editions provisoires, 2008
This mini CD is a short and elegantly packaged special edition release of John Cage’s 4'33" (1952) and 0'00" (1962).

Originally released on Cramps discs in 1974 and performed by Gianni-Emilio Simonetti, Matthieu Saladin expresses the concept of this re-release on the inside booklet flap: “Maximum amplification of the first release of 4’33” by John Cage…”. The listening instructions suggest one écouter à haute volume. I like my hearing just fine so I ignored this instruction at first. But then my curiousity got the better of me and I was rewarded with a profoundly intense state of otic euphoria after 4 minutes and 38 seconds. As the sound stopped my ears had that fuzzy sounding feeling that occurs after rock concerts in large stadiums. But wait a minute! This CD is 4’38” not 4’33”?! I can only assume that the duration is slightly off because of the simultaneaous performance of 0’00”. Or did the performer take liberties with the composer’s score? Did John Cage prepare a special version for the premiere recording? Did the engineer forget to shut off the record button?

Be that as it may it is still a beautiful if slightly deranged concept to present this work in a recording of the first release on Cramps at maximum amplification. What results is an astonishingly aggressive noise piece with few variants in its dense and gritty texture. Of special note are moments at 2’57” and 4’33”. Who would have thought someone would turn Cage’s so-called ‘silence’ piece into an Italian futurist-esque tape noise composition? It might be conceptually similar to when Eugene Chadbourne covered J.S. Bach’s cello suites on the banjo. This cover version of 4’33” may not be popular but it’s definitely a keeper. *** (thirty-) three stars.

CD Review: Pierre Bastien, Visions of Doing (western vinyl: WEST053)

2010-01-15T16:35:00.024-05:00

With this latest release from Pierre Bastien, I can safely say that every recording Bastien releases I like – a lot. Most impressive is his ability to put elementary musical materials and found sounds together into an enjoyable and extraordinary listening experience. Like songs you may have forgotten, each piece can sound familiar but inevitably takes you where you don’t expect. Pierre Bastien’s music includes homemade sound making machines that create series’ of drones and rhythmical patterns. His ‘toy orchestra’ is made up of many mechanical parts (from the toy set Meccano) and other found objects that create layers of sound like several beds of rustling leaves. Over this Bastien sometimes solos, sometimes plays his own wobbly ostinatos on acoustically altered trumpet or small guitar and occasionally on older electronic keyboards of the sort you don’t hear much anymore. The drones and patterns are unique to Bastien as are the physicality of the instruments and their ability to make sounds. All of the invented asymmetries are taken into account in any given composition of Bastien’s where rhythmical peculiarities and odd gestures abound. His musically meandering solos also have a wonderful low-tech ambiance. Such as the enchanting electric piano solo in South African Lady that moves from atonal chords to modal riffs to rhythmically uneven clusters as though the pianist has lost his way indefinitely – and then suddenly the precarious line of a slow moving musical saw will float in and out like a ghost on its own train.

At times there is a feeling of nostalgia in Bastien’s tunes, a nostalgia that might resemble being in a smoky laid-back nightclub listening to Duke Ellington and his band play a super slow yet swinging rendition of Mood Indigo for the fortieth time. Such is the tone of The Thermodynamic Orchestra. Or the trippy lips-buzzing-singing-into-a-bowl-of-water solo that beats the hell out of any kazoo I’ve ever heard in The Girl from Surinam.

Visions of Doing is different from other Bastien records in that it marks his collaboration in sound/film with audiovisual artist Karel Doing. “Now twenty years after our first encounter I am paying homage to Karel Doing’s images…more than just the soundtracks to his films, these pieces are the result of years of collaboration…” writes Bastien. Several of Karel Doing’s sounds have been incorporated into the fabric of Bastien’s musical selections. And Bastien’s music inspired Doing’s development of several of his ‘Optical Toys.’ The main difference I hear from previous releases is a more processed sound attributed to the types of musical materials used. Here Bastien deftly layers the acoustic with the electronic while letting the sounds ‘behave as themselves’ as though they were simply found on the beach before being thrown into the composition. Although there are definitive Bastien ideas in these selections, there are also elements of the unknown.

And the one thing that brings Bastien and Doing together is not to be left off of this disc: as an added bonus there is an excerpt from the film collaboration, Four Eyes. Here the listener views the visual imagery of this duo’s collective mindset.

But even without seeing the film I had a very definite visual experience of the music after listening. The images – rightly or wrongly - can be created in the fiction of one’s mind and I like that very much about this recording. Even upon hearing sonic references the overall effect is not one of a particular narrative, but more like a non-existent fiction - the kind that is not written, only imagined.

If you haven’t heard the music of Pierre Bastien nor seen his collaborations with filmmaker Karel Doing I highly recommend seeking them out. But this work is not easy to find in stores or catalogues. Online it can be found from www.pierrebastien.com and www.westernvinyl.com.

Here's an interesting Jeanette Winterson quote:

2009-11-20T00:38:00.003-05:00

"The media ransacks the arts, in its images, in its adverts, in its copy...in its journalist's jargon, it continually offers up faint shadows of the form and invention of real music, real paintings, real words. All of us are subject to this bombardment, which both deadens our sensibilities and makes us fear what is not instant, approachable, consumable. The solid presence of art demands from us significant effort, an anathema to popular culture."

- Jeanette Winterson, from Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery.

And check out: jeanette winterson's home page !

I first came across her work via the film of one of her most famous works of fiction called: Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit.

ego-surfing ~ 101?

2009-11-16T19:24:00.004-05:00

Dear everyone who may read this blog,

Just checking out the blog thing to see if it really is all that interesting.

In case you're wondering, I plan to use this site to update my new recordings, concerts, reviews and performances. I will also be writing about my work as a composer and things related to it.

Here's my first update/news bit:
(actually it is more of a note - 2 - self. Isn't that what this whole blog thing is about?)
I recently discovered that emusic is carrying my first solo CD in their catalogue! raw sangudo. Go figure - always the last to know. But one has to subscribe to emusic to download it. Not sure how much this costs but I am sure I don't get paid for it! However, for those interested, here is an old review of this old CD by Piero Scaruffi: rs rev 2003. Muchos graçios Signour Scaruffi!! Note that Signour Scaruffi has spelled my name incorrectly. This could be due to an earlier mistake made by the allmusic guide. But thank gawd for their all-american cotton socks they eventually corrected it. However, it may also be a case of not knowing the variant spelling of the old Norse nickname for Alice. Whatev'!

Sometimes information on the internet is funny - quite unintentionally so. For example, one site has me born in Victoria, B.C., another in Vancouver, B.C. and yet another in Edmonton, Alberta. I also seem to have been born in both 1965 and 1963 - quite a feat! (Actually, my mother is an alien.)

Occasionally, information about my earlier recordings will surface such as on cd universe: customer's who bought.... Scroll down and you will find some interesting tips like: people who buy Bach Partitas by Perlman also purchase; allison cameron: Ornaments CD :D No kiddin'!! And if you scroll down on this last page you will also find links to purchase ornaments at Tiffany's. Wow.

Well, if you have found my first (or second??) blog to be slightly megalomaniacal, I refer you to Edward Rothstein's review. It contains the most notable (or perhaps quotable) quote of my career to date:

""Blank Sheet of Metal," by a young composer, Allison Cameron, was so peculiar and megalomaniacally annoying, yet so obviously the product of an unusual talent, sensitive to sonority and time's organization, that I was curious to hear her other music."

Thanks Ed! Yours is still the best!!
à bientôt...

2009-11-16T18:37:00.005-05:00

hello world this is my new blog hello world this is my new bog