U65 | Ludovic Medery | Les pierres sèches
Les pierres sèches_excerpt1
Les pierres sèches_excerpt2
format : CD ltd to 200 hand numbered copies/Digital
Regular edition of 180 copies packaged in clear vinyl sleeve with folded insert + an additional art card both on 350gr satin paper
Special ultra ltd edition of 20 copies 10 copies packaged in black mass-tinted cardboard digisleeve with frame and 10 copies packaged in thick pure white cardboard digisleeve with frame.
! PLS PRECISE BLACK or WHITE when ordering !
it holds a set of 2 double-sided art cards with a different artwork from the regular edition on 350gr satin paper.
+ a set of 3 square photos on Fujicolor Crystal Archive Paper Supreme.
Inner sleeve features a strip of old book paper covered with block-printed white ink, and pencil trace
it’ll be inkjet printed with catalog reference & edition number + artist’s name and title.
Digisleeve comes in a resealable cello.
release year : 2020
length : 37’36
track : Les pierres sèches
status : still available !
>>> order via Paypal : chalkdc@unfathomless.net
Regular edition
(Belgium) : 14 € (inc.postage)
(Europe) : 15 € (inc.postage)
(World) : 16 € (inc.postage)
Special ultra ltd edition SOLD OUT !
(Belgium) : 17 € (inc.postage)
(Europe) : 18 € (inc.postage)
(World) : 19 € (inc.postage)
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: info :
It’s within the framework of a disused factory located in Liège, a post-industrial city of Belgium that I gathered the sound recordings over a six months period (March till August 2016).
This factory is in St Leonard quarter (in the North part of the city, dubbed sometimes as “North Quarter”). At a time of whom some still remember, workshops, some small factories & stores flourished there between 1950 and 1980.
Historically, this quarter saw these factories and stores emerge and die. Scars from this process still strew across the place, namely empty shop fronts hastily refurbished with scraps and abandoned buildings not waiting anymore for its workers.
As the years went by, this quarter met different populations from the four corners of Europe and Africa, first for the coal, and then for the steel industry. The Meuse is the river which splits the city into two banks, the left one is bordered by St Leonard Quarter.
Intimately bound to the history of this Quarter, the building I explored is adjacent to the esplanade erected and completed in 2006. This esplanade which grew up as some breathing space and meeting place for its inhabitants had formerly a totally different function.
It was the place where the prison of the city sat. Moved by a vivid exploration desire and curiosity, I wandered through the site many times until it became inaccessible.
During my visits, I divided my sound recordings in 3 phases :
– sound ambience without intervention
– sound ambiences with interventions within the space
– searches for objects of all sizes allowing me to create other sounds and play sequences.
~
C’est dans le cadre d’une usine désaffectée de Liège, ville post-industrielle de Belgique, que j’ai réalisé ces captations sonores sur une période de 6 mois (mars à août 2016).
Cette usine se situe dans le quartier St Léonard (situé dans nord de la ville on le surnomme parfois Quartier Nord). A une époque dont certains se souviennent encore, des ateliers, de petites usines et commerces y florissaient entre 1950 et 1980.
Historiquement, ce quartier a vu naître et mourir ces usines et commerces. Ces cicatrices encore visibles parsèment le quartier. Vitrines vides réhabilitées à la va-vite avec des bouts de rien et bâtiments à l’abandon n’attendant plus les ouvriers qui les fréquentaient. Au fil des années, ce quartier a vu arriver différentes populations venant des quatre coins de l’Europe et d’Afrique. D’abord pour le charbonnage, ensuite pour la sidérurgie. « La Meuse » est le fleuve qui sépare la ville en deux rives, la gauche est bordée par le quartier Saint Léonard.
Intimement lié a l’histoire de ce quartier, le bâtiment que j’ai visité lors de cette exploration est attenant à l’esplanade qui à été construite et achevée en 2006. Cette esplanade devenu espace de respiration et rencontre entre habitants avait auparavant une toute autre fonction, c’était là où se situait la prison de la ville. Animé par le désir d’exploration et la curiosité, j’ai exploré à plusieurs occasions ce site jusqu’à ce qu’il soit complètement inaccessible.
Durant mes visites, j’ai décidé de diviser mes captations en trois phases;
– ambiance sonore sans intervention
– ambiance sonores avec interventions dans l’espace
– recherche d’objets de toute taille me permettant de créer d’autres sons et séquences jeux.
(Ludovic Medery, January 2020)
: reviews :
Les pierres sèches: an intriguing work of mystery and nostalgia in an abandoned factory.
A newcomer to The Sound Projector, Belgian sound artist / composer / social worker Ludovic Medery had already made fifteen recordings, all of them self-released, before he released his first work on a label, “EMERgences” on Daniel Crokaert’s Unfathomless. Medery presents his second work “Les pierres sèches”, also on Unfathomless, based on recordings made in a disused factory in Liège, a post-industrial city in Belgium, over a period of six months in 2016. The abandoned factory sits next to an esplanade built and completed in 2006 on the site of a former prison. In this recording, Medery explores the history of the factory and the prison, as it were, in their current context of a deindustrialised environment in an ongoing economic and social slump with abandoned buildings and empty shopfronts.
The work is continuous though it may be made up of many recordings made at different times in 2016 and not necessarily in chronological order. Near-constant birdsong, cricket scree (some of which sounds electronic) and the background noise of children’s chatter as the youngsters play in the streets around the factory interact with the crunch of noise, crackle, scratch and other sounds, bringing together and contrasting the ghosts of the factory’s past, when it must have been bustling with the humming and grinding of machines, perhaps the banging and clanking of hammers and other implements the shouts of workers above the continuous machine noises and the clatter of people’s footsteps over hard floors, with the current reality of quiet, forlorn abandonment and perhaps desolation. What listeners notice most is the continuous juxtaposition of the interior sounds and noises of the former factory and prison with the exterior sounds, with the result that both sets of sounds highlight one another and engage in continuous dialogue. A distinct atmosphere emerges: one can almost see the light grey skies and smell a faint whiff of rust and dank water puddles in the wide spaces of the former factory.
As “Les pierres …” continues, it starts to become very interesting about the 20th minute when a series of whippy noises starts up, and listeners may wonder what sort of factory work might have taken place here, that these whooshing sounds are the result, or whether these represent whippings and beatings of workers (who might also have been prisoners) in the factory for various transgressions. Only the walls of the factory and the stones set in the esplanade can tell us if they could speak, and yet they are growing more and more silent through dilapidation and disrepair. Mould grows across them, muffling any voice they have. Young people scream and cry and sharp crackling sounds cut across their voices.
This album turns out to be a highly absorbing and intriguing work of mystery, nostalgia of a sort (though I daresay the ghosts in the walls would not have great stories to tell of how people were treated in the factory and the prison) and dark secrets that even the ghosts themselves would be afraid to recount. Long after the album ends, the images of the disused factory and prison, the spaces within the remaining building, and what exists around it now remain with the listener.
Nausika/Jennifer Hor
The Sound Projector
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When I first drove through the Belgium city Liège, I was surprised by the desolation and decay. That was somewhere in the seventies and I understand the city looks quite different these days (looking at the yearly cycling game that passes through there for sure). Between March and August 2016, Ludovic Medery made some recording in a disused factory in the North Quarter of the town, a once-thriving place of workshops. Next to the building was the old prison. This piece, while recorded in one place, is also very much of one place and one time; at least that’s how Medery made it sound like. He’s going through the place capturing the emptiness of the space, hitting, scratching and scraping objects and at home, he added a bit of analogue synthesizer, a ring modulator and a feedback generator. Oddly enough, so I thought, it is these additions that make it even more together. They add a sense of strangeness to the music. While rummaging through space, stumbling over objects, some far-away cries and cars, these electronics sound like a stale wind blowing through the place. All the sounds seem to return all the time and yet, they sound different down the line. Medery added something else, maybe bringing sounds more to the foreground, that sort of thing, but even within the unity of the piece (thirty-five minutes in total), there is some excellent variation; or even a sort of dramatic climax? Maybe not exactly, but it all worked out neatly intense.
Frans de Waard
Vital Weekly
Unfathomless 