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ROBERT, JOCELYN - The Maze

Format: CD Label & Cat.Number: Fragment Factory [FRAG35] Release Year: 2015 Note: new work by this highly interesting sound artist from Canada, who creates on THE MAZE a 'map of territories" linked through himself, mainly based on field recordings gathered through the years from around the world => very abstract, obscure, strange sounds & noises, often with unrecognizable source, but also very clear & concrete material from the everyday life are set into a surprising and cryptic musique concrete stream... Price (incl. 19% VAT): €13.00 More Info "The Maze is a map of different territories I covered in my recent travels. But the mapped territories are not contiguous: I am the tunnel that links these places and times, I am the border that keeps them together. Now, a geographer who makes a map doesn't make a survey: these are two different things. The survey - the gathering - comes first, but the mapping process includes several subsequent steps: scaling, removing, enhancing, and adding. Scale allows to grasp a large territory at a glance. The degree of scaling will make some aspects of the territory emerge and other disappear. The second step is the removal. A geographer who draws a map removes a lot of elements in order for others to appear. Then, some elements will be enhanced: on a tourist map, significant buildings will be bigger than scale and coloured, on a navigation map algae in waterways will be larger than life... Finally, things will be added: words, signs, numbers... Data from the surveys is never enough. Words and numbers are never seen in the fields, but they are on maps and play a very important role. They are ideas about the territories, references, links to culture. A map is astory, and the geographer is a storyteller. So I turned into a geographer and made The Maze as a mapping process. In The Maze there are lots of fieldrecordings, many of which have seen their time scale change, some have had elements removed, other enhanced, and there are also musical elements added here and there, which tell more about the feelings of the places and travels. The Maze is both a journey and a story. (Jocelyn Robert, September 2015)" [label info] www.fragmentfactory.com "Canadian sound artist Jocelyn Robert has been at work since the mid-80s, recording initially for ReR. His new, limited edition CD is made up of material dating back over a decade and seeks to conjure up images of places he has visited by way of blending field recordings into lengthy musique concrète pieces. Without prior knowledge of the artist’s intentions, the contents would (for most) surely be incomprehensible, with the exception of some short, tuneful colour inserts. While not entirely without humour, there is an academic austerity here which one can best penetrate by giving up to the concept and enjoying the sometimes unsettling, unpredictable narratives of Robert’s adventures as if they are one’s own late booking to a foreign city. Stride into frozen fog on early morning riversides, mopeds coming close to running you down and treasured videos of special moments being reduced to a glitchy mess by the time you get them home. One group the disc brings to mind is Switzerland’s Schimpfluch, Robert being similarly cryptic and unafraid of both sudden silences and changes of pace. Not surprising then that the Swiss collective have also recorded several releases for this German label, which seems to be working outwards from basement noise into more self-consciously conceptual art." [Phil Smith / Record Collector mag]