U33 | David Vélez & Bruno Duplant

U33 | David Vélez & Bruno Duplant | Moyens Fantômes

Moyens Fantômes_excerpt1

Moyens Fantômes_excerpt2

format : CD ltd to 200 hand numbered copies
all copies come with an additional art card on 300gr satin paper
release year : 2016
length : 49’30
tracks :

1. Moyens Fantômes

status :  still available

>>> order via Paypal : chalkdc@unfathomless.net

(Belgium) : 14 € (inc.postage)
(Europe) : 15 € (inc.postage)
(World) : 16 € (inc.postage)

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: info :

With the obsolescence of storing and reproducing media devices, a lot of information becomes unavailable and inaccessible but does it mean it has ceased to exist as information? What happens with a film whose last copy is in Beta tape when it can no longer be reproduced?

On the second semester of 2014 Bruno Duplant and David Vélez started to dialogue about this subject and decided to compose a piece that points out to these questions presenting them as the construction of a place. We usually figure out that a place and the objects in it produce the sounds that we listen in there but in sound composition for the listener, the sounds build a place and the things inside it, a place that he inhabits with his imagination.

The two artists selected to work with sounds stored in media that is no longer available like VHS, Beta, floppy discs, zip drives, laser disc..etc… media that is becoming less and less accessible and that at one point could be unable to reproduce.

Duplant and Vélez were expecting that these sounds could build a place that were eerie and bleak, not really pleasant and where the listener could probably feel vigilant and uncomfortable as if in presence of something that he won’t perceive but that is actually there.

(Lina Velandia,  August 2015)

: reviews :

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Le concept de « Moyens Fantômes » est carrément cool : récupérer toute une panoplie de vieux matériel « médiatique » (au sens du média, hein), d’enregistrement, autrement dit lecteur VHS, lecteur cassette, vieux disques rayés, disquettes PC et autres, et d’en enregistrer la douce agonie. Concept similaire au délire surnoté dans ces pages, mea culpa, de Basinski mais avec un résultat nettement plus convaincant. Cette unique pièce un peu longuette enregistrée dans des usines désaffectées et entrepôts tout pourris entre Bogota et Waziers via le transfert d’un autre média, suppose-t-on, celui d’internet, d’une structure opaque et aux moyens quelques peu… fantômatiques (désolé) – micro contact, prise de son, quelques précisions ? Peu importe, au final – équivoque, quand tu nous tiens !-, car au casque, ce sont les portes des salles d’opérations abandonnées de Prypiat qui s’ouvrent devant nous. Sensitif, pour ne pas dire sensoriel, presque olfactif, on sentirait presque le papier peint s’écailler sous nos doigts et les morceaux de plafonds craquer sous nos semelles. L’amour du détail est assez ahurissant (d’où le casque…) : sons discrets, quasi inaudibles, lointains, spatialisation sensationnelle, mastering d’une précision d’orfèvre, c’est du grand art. Une pièce censée être « inconfortable », mais pour le gutsien moyen, qui s’y trouvera au contraire comme à la maison, peu agressé, peu malmené, plutôt bien entouré, sur le mode de la petite chaise de camping au milieu des ruines qui ne fument plus depuis des années, ce sera peut être un peu trop gentil – gentil au sens de linéaire. L’œuvre pêche un peu par son manque de relief et d’événements, surtout sur une durée aussi longue. Peu de tension, peu de mouvements, et une narration trop monotone auront raison d’une écoute intégrale. Le comble, quand tout est occupé par l’idée du terminal, de la finalité, de la mort matérielle ! Un disque auquel j’ai totalement envie de mettre 5, mais ce sera 4, à contre cœur…

Simon Bouin
Guts Of Darkness
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Il faut croire aux choses qui n’existent pas, les traquer partout : à ces informations qui, à peine exprimées, déjà se volatilisent ; aux possibles esprits qui les ont exprimées et qu’elles emportent avec elles. Des champs de bataille américains (Michael Esposito sur Perryville Battlefield) à un recoin de forêt amazonienne (David Vélez et Simon Whetham sur Yoi) ou encore, pour le même Vélez et Bruno Duplant, d’usines désaffectées en entrepôts abandonnés, à Bogota comme à Waziers.

Ici et là, les deux hommes ont donc enregistré grâce à, disent-ils, un équipement électro-nique rudimentaire, qui plus est ancien – on se demandera alors si ces « moyens fantômes » ne renverraient pas aux machines plutôt qu’aux esprits qu’elles voulaient capturer. C’est peu dire que, sur les murs, la peinture est écaillée : au son, c’est une corrosion d’un autre genre qui fait effet. Chassées par les balayages, combien de présences s’évanouissent entre deux portes ? Dans les flaques qui parsèment des sols anéantis, il y a bien quelques ondes mais aucun reflet (d’autant que la phonographie n’est pas photographie) ; et puis, dans un retour, c’est la soudaine musique d’un synthétiseur miniature.

Vélez et Duplant n’avaient donc qu’à se promener et à constater : qu’entre deux grisailles un chant peut trouver sa place, que la nature qui peu à peu reprend ses droits est capable de sifflements divers ou de vocaliser comme un homme pourrait le faire dans un parlophone pour simplement jouer un tour… Aux antipodes, c’est le même constat : ex-périmental et étrangement musical.

Guillaume Belhomme
Improv Sphere

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I didn’t listen to Bruno Duplant‘s recent work since a long time, so it’s a great pleasure to discover this new collaboration with David Vélez, released at Unfathomless. “Moyens Fantômes” is a long collaborative piece where the two artists explore some static in devastated spaces. Obsolete media devices (like VHS, Beta, …) are in use and place audi-tors in a strange way of listening. This is a disturbing and ghostly piece, an unusual use of media storage devices, and a deep exploration of a new space of sounds. Uncom-fortable in some way, but very intriguing.

Julien Héraud
Improv Sphere

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The Unfathomless series (the younger sibling of the Mystery Sea label, currently on hia-tus) returns with two very different soundscapes: a night in Australia’s Garig Gunak Bar-lu with Slavek Kwi (artificial memory trace) and a “dilapidated mass of sound” from David Vélez & Bruno Duplant. As usual, the presentation is exquisite: Daniel Crokaert’s fine distressed art on square cards, encased in strong flexi-sleeves. To listen to both re-leases is to understand the breadth of the genre, which stretches from reflection to im-pression, location-based field recording to sound art.

David Vélez & Bruno Duplant‘s Moyens Fantômes is a different sort of sound art, one that toys with ideas of obsolescence while preserving the experience in a durable format (or at least somewhat durable ~ compact discs are sturdy, but they do oxidize). This sin-gle 49-minute piece is comprised of sounds sourced from abandoned formats such as Beta, VHS, floppy disc and laser disc. In the digital era, it’s easy to forget the brief hey-day of such forms; I once wrote a college term paper on a floppy disc, saved it (because I thought that it would last forever) and now have no convenient way to read it. And I still recall visiting a friend who had spent an inordinate amount of money to create a laser disc listening room, boasting about how “ahead of the curve” he was.
These artists ask, “a lot of information becomes unavailable and inaccessible but does it mean it has ceased to exist as information?” Their composition contains fragments and echoes, glitches and rubs, the sound of information trying to break through, or perhaps, to escape. In other words, this is the modern version of the old, warped tape. The vintage television on the cover is the most accessible reference; every so often, one appears in a thrift store for a pittance, and nobody buys it. And yet, we have a soft spot for abandoned things, a wabi-sabi regard. It’s amazing to think of how quickly such a thing develops, that the floppy disc, once considered “cold”, can now be regarded with such warmth. All it took was one generation. Perhaps one day, looking at such a thing, people will wonder at the irretrievable information locked in its plastic, translatable only into cyrillic letters and squares. Or perhaps one day this too will become art: the art of the abraded. If so, Vélez and Duplant are already “ahead of the curve” ~ they recognize that even a recorded format can have a soul. We will not all die, but be changed.

Richard Allen
A Closer Listen
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The other new release by Unfathomless is a collaborative work between Colombian sound artist David Velez and Bruno Duplant from France. The information is a bit unclear if they recorded this work together, as ‘in the same space’, or through the use of the Internet. The cover says ‘recorded between Bogota, Colombia and Waziers, France, in abandoned factories and warehouses, deposits with discarded electronics and houses of friends and relatives with obsolescence electronic equipment’; the latter is to be understood as those things that were once popular (or not), but which nobody seems to be using any more, such “VHS, Beta, floppy discs, zip drives, laser disc etc.” and due time it will be hard to find any apparatus to do a proper playback of the media. In many ways this seems an unusual disc for Unfathomless. For one it doesn’t seem to be dealing with field recordings per se, even if one takes in account the use of abandoned factories and warehouses, but also the electronic sounds that are stored on these carriers seems to be far away from the usual sounds picked up in creeks and rivers around the world. Perhaps one could say, in all the strangeness of the music, noisy, abrasive even at times, this is a more musical work than many others on the label. The hiss stored on the carriers, the sounds generated with these objects, like rusty debris found on an old factory floor, is still quite musical, albeit of a highly experimental nature of course. Towards the end there is a longer bit that seems to be referring to the world of Unfathomless, through a collection of field recordings. I found all of this quite captivating. It is a great journey into the industrial wasteland.

Frans de Waard
Vital Weekly