Emmanuel Mieville // Four Towers And A Bridge Tape

Sound artist Emmanuel Mieville from Paris, France will launch an experimental label in Berlin, Germany in January 2023.It is a cassette released from Forms of Minutiae with a limited edition of 60.

Includes field recordings, hurdy gurdy, and concrete 4 songs using open reels.Comes with DL code.Below is an explanation by the label.

"Four Towers and Bridges", composer and field recordingist Emmanuel MievilleMoreshares the bridge between the spells of Musique Concrète and the sound of machine acoustics.

Among the four tracks, electro-acoustic sculptures and drone-square gestures intersect to form a seemingly continuous investigation into the passage mechanics.The album is at the mercy of sounds recorded around technology that traverses from the Eiffel Tower in Viana do Castelo (Portugal) to the elevators and automated rail systems of the BnF (Bibliotheque Nationale de France) in Paris. The system, called the TAD, is a hidden transport device made up of hanging cases for moving books and materials from the BnF stock area to lecture rooms.Track each type of movement or object, such as bridges and vehicles, elevators and people, TAD and printed matter, precipitation and water.Its rhythms, hums, vibrations and creaks intertwine, sometimes accompanied by the sustained murmuring of stringed instruments and electric hurdy-gurdies, giving it the air of a recontextualized French folk song.Unexpectedly, the album ends with a rural scene where the machines stop and the sound of rain reverberates.This short soundscape offers a peek into the strange microscopic world brought about by getting wet in the rain.

But from its title, "Four Towers and a Bridge," the album inevitably suggests an architectural context.But architectural impressions expand beyond the sites and techniques explored as the concept of bridges is brought to life by music and the artist's compositional methodology.Through field recording material and studio manipulation, the album forms a wire that connects real-life sounds with sculpted electroacoustic interventions, providing a passage from the concrete to the abstract.This is further accentuated by a blend of machine hum and hurdy-gurdy.Drones transport like containers. Mievilleis aware of that and hisMusique Concrète has created music of crossings that transports us from one place (or state) to another.And finally, this bridge comes back to the visible, embodied in the composer's reel-to-reel tape, or even the cassette tape you're listening to.

In the composer's own words, "the movement of both listening and sculpting creates tangible material, and decontextualization provides a space for new listening." Four Towers and a Bridge invites us to dwell on the limits of our connecting mechanisms while exploring the ambiguity of that space.This is the music of passage.

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Includes DL code. Edition of 60. C40 cassette.

Forms of Minutiae:

"With 'four towers and a bridge', composer and field recordist, Emmanuel Mieville shares musique concrète spells and sonic bridgings of machinery acoustics.

In the span of four tracks, electroacoustic sculptings and dronesque gestures intersect to form a seemingly continuous investigation of the mechanisms of passage. The album toys with sounds recorded in, on, and around technologies of crossing; from the Ponte Eiffel bridge in Viana do Castelo (Portugal) to the elevator and automated railway system of the BnF (the national library of France) in Paris. The latter, known as the TAD, is a hidden transportation apparatus made of suspended cases that move books and documents from the BnF's stocking areas to its lecture rooms. To each track its means of traversing and its subjects: a bridge and its vehicles, an elevator and its humans, the TAD and its printed matter, a precipitation and its water. Their rhythms, hums, vibrations, and squeaks intertwine and, at times, are accompanied by the sustained murmurs of a stringed and motorized hurdy-gurdy instrument that gives hints of a recontextualized French folk music. Surprisingly, the album concludes with an opening on a rural environment where the machines have stopped to give way to the pattering of rain. This short-lived soundscape offers us a window into a strange micro-world harbored by a drenching.

But with the title 'four towers and a bridge', the album inevitably suggests an architectonic context. Yet the impression of architecture expands beyond the investigated sites and technologies as the notion of bridging is brought to life by the music and the artist's compositional methodology. With its field recording material and studio manipulations, the album forms connecting wires between sounds from the real and sculpted electroacoustic interventions, thus providing passage from the concrete to abstractions. This is underlined further by the blending of the machines' humming qualities with the hurdy- A drone transports like a vessel. Mieville is aware of that and his musique concrète creates a music of crossing that carries us from one place — or state — to another. Finally this bridging seeps back into the tangible as it materializes on the composer's reel-to-reel tape and ultimately on the cassette you are listening to.

In the composer's own words, “the bilateral movement between hearing and sculpting sounds yields a concrete substance, while decontextualization offers a new space for listening”. It is that space's ambiguity that 'four towers and a bridge' investigates while extending an invitation to dwell in the liminality of connecting mechanisms.

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Emmanuel Mieville is a composer, field recordist and scholar of musique concrète which he studied with Philippe Mion and Jacques Lejeune at the GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales) in Paris, France. Fueled by a life-long affection for creative radio programs, his experimental music and soundscape compositions explore the aural perceptions and memories engraved in urban and wild environments. Mieville has worked with Butoh dancers, video artists and fellow musicians and has contributed to the field recording workshop 'Camp' lead by Chris Watson and Fransisco Lopez, and to the exhibition 'Audiosphere' curated by Francisco Lopez at Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid, 2021). Emmanuel Mieville's previous albums were released on Baskaru, Cronica, Taalem, and XingWu."

Artist : emmanuel mieville

Label: Label: Forms of Minutes