_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
A propos des Klebs...
Le travail d'édition de Ouie Dire est un projet artistique et sonore. L'ambition n'est pas cette de produire musique ou documents sonores (qu'ils ont à faire avec électronique/elettroacustica expérimentale), mais d'inventer des objets phonographiques originaux. Nous avons reçu la grande "carte phonographique" des Klebs contenant un morceau composé de Xavier Charles (clarinette), David Chiesa (contrebasse), Jean Pallandre (phonographie), Marc Pichelin, (synthèse analogique) et Laurent Sassi (mixage, spatialisation et diffusion). L'idée est vraiment belle, le graphisme intriguant (très français) et le projet electro-acoustique ne l'est pas moins.
Conseillé !
All About Jazz - Italie
Le trio Chiesa (contrebasse) - Pallandre (paysagiste sonore) - Pichelin (synthèse analogique) présentait ce matin-là, dans la salle de la Maison de la Vallée, une coproduction du festival NPAI de Parthenay et de Jazz à Luz. A partir d’enregistrements de sons concrets (chants d’oiseaux, bruits d’eau et de mécaniques, paroles d’artisans...) mixés sur le vif et d’une contrebasse aérienne qui s’ajoute aux sons sans les commenter, les trois hommes nous proposent une vision tout en nuances, du presque rien à la stridence, pour revenir aux bruits infimes d’un marais au crépuscule. Un peu comme le film sonore d’une journée dans la campagne poitevine.
Citizen Jazz
A propos de Mathieu Werchowski & David Chiesa - "Sharp Claws Cats" ...
This evening's installment of Dangerous Curve's aptly named Is it Music? Series outdoes itself with a lineup featuring collaborative and solo "musical" experiments. The evening is built around the gentle earthquakes of David Chiesa's double and electric basses, the Rimbaud-esque violin improvisations of fellow Frenchman Mathieu Werchowski
Shana Nys Dambrot -San Francisco -
"Across five improvised tracks the duo bookend dark pools of silence with thin smears of
light, the strings singing with glissing overtones and the kind of intimately focused
dronework (...) Each movement has a subtle variation in tone and attack that makes the
whole album feel precisely directed, from dense harmonics through cyclical minimalism and
hypnotic raga-esque duets (...) A beautifully conceived set."
David Keenan, The Wire (www.thewire.co.uk)
"Mathieu Werchowski (violin and viola) and David Chiesa (double bass) offer a set of improvisations recorded in three different churches in Dordogne, France in January 2006. This is high quality string music, complex and detailed, which makes very good use of the acoustics of the recording sites. There are many improvisors who pay particular attention to sound and detail, but Werchowski and Chiesa are way ahead of the pack, away from pseudo-concepts, simply and majestically within the music and the sound."
Metamkine (www.metamkine.com)
"Both musicians go on an adventurous trip, casting the web of their music as they go along, like a fisherman at sea would cast his nets. They create structures, shades and entities, exploring their contours and substance as if it were a process of nature. All in all, the music is astounding, powerful yet soaring, a ballet of bows that fills the listener with emotional and intellectual joy."
Pierre Hemptinne - Oh! Que Ça Bouge! (www.lamediatheque.be)
A propos de Phonèmes ...
Fragmentos de uma jornada em torno e ao interior de um contrabaixo. Em duas peças únicas, com a duração média de 20 minutos cada, David Chiesa (nasc. 1970), contrabaixista francês autodidacta, desce às profundezas do instrumento e descobre segredos escondidos, que traz à superfície. Chiesa orienta o seu trabalho na direcção de outras artes, a poesia, a dança, o cinema. Cinematográfica é a sucessão de imagens que o contrabaixista sugere, pizzicato, percussão e movimentos com arco na transformação da música em palavras, fonografia de amplo vocabulário e riqueza imagética. A música de David Chiesa, complexa na sua estruturação, nasce de um processo de composição em tempo real e exige do ouvinte algo mais que a mera passividade na fruição - a decifração de uma linguagem que se vai tornando inteligível e familiar à medida em que o ouvinte se deixa envolver e seduzir. Phonèmes foi gravado em Juillaguet, França, por Laurent Sassi, com a assistência do contrabaixista norte-americano Kent Carter, em Novembro de 2005. Edição da Creative Sources Recordings, 2005.
Eduardo Chagas (Jazz e Arredores)
"Phonèmes" is an album in which double bass is more the means for an anguishing self-analysis than a regular instrument. David Chiesa does not hide his intentions, confronting us with a meagre aesthetic of gestural subtlety, eliciting concentrated bursts of energy from the bass while leaving silence to oversee the whole performance. Although devoid of any kind of known pattern, Chiesa's style is a counterattack against that genetic manipulation which - slowly but inevitably - is transforming what we used to call "reductionism" to a cliché, still palatable but somehow predictable. Without the need of extraterrestrial techniques or excess of revolutionary application, the two tracks of this CD use a whole lot of dynamic (in)discipline and textural dissonance, privileging pictorial representations of touching depth and accomplished manipulations of acoustic attributes - both strong assets in this artist's engaging work.
Massimo Ricci (Touching Extremes)
More musicality is experienced on the solo-album by David Chiesa. He started as an electric basssplayer in rock bands, but changed to improvised music and the acoustic bass. In a duel with silence quiet and loud parts succeed each other, illustrating in the meantime the considerable technique of Chiesa.
Dolf Mulder (Vital)
"Phonèmes" to pierwsza solowa plyta Davida Chiesa, urodzonego w 1970 r. francuskiego kontrabasisty i gitarzysty basowego, który w 1997 roku "nawrócil sie" z rocka na muzyke improwizowana, wspólpracujac odtad owocnie nie tylko z innymi muzykami, ale i z tancerzami, poetami (wiersz jednego z nich - Ly Thanh Tien zdobi ksiazeczke omawianej plyty) i eksperymentalnymi filmowcami. W kregu zainteresowan Chiesy znajduje sie tez wzajemna relacja pomiedzy materialem improwizowanym a nagrywanym; intryguja go wszelkie interakcje zachodzace pomiedzy wykonaniem i jego sposobem zapisywania. Jest wspólzalozycielem Le Clou - stowarzyszenia popularyzujacego i promujacego muzyke improwizowana. "Phonèmes", nagrana w studio MAD w Juillanguet w listopadzie 2005 r., zawiera dwa utwory zarejestrowane i edytowane przez Laurenta Sassi - jednego z czlonków kolektywu Ouie/Dire, z którym Chiesa regularnie wspólpracuje. Przy nagrywaniu materialu asystowal Kent Carter - znakomity, acz chyba nieco niedoceniany kontrabasista (najbardziej chyba kojarzony z formacjami kierowanymi przez Steve'a Lacy, Carle Bley i Johna Stevensa). Nie dziwi wiec to, ze uskrzydlony ich obecnoscia Chiesa nagral album znakomity, byc moze zawierajacy muzyke nieco hermetyczna, lecz wciaz przyswajalna.
Jej odbiór ulatwic powinien stan podwyzszonej uwagi towarzyszacy sluchaniu.
Plyta stanowi zapis podrózy przez kraine artykulacji. Muzyk posluguje sie calym arsenalem sposobów wydobycia i ksztaltowania dzwieku (czyzby to byly owe tytulowe fonemy?), jednak nie traktuje ich jako celu samego w sobie, lecz jako srodek sluzacy tworzeniu utworów. Obydwa nagrania skladaja sie z pojedynczych komórek, obmywanych falami ciszy, rozdzielajacej poszczególne epizody i przez to nie zachowuja tradycyjnie pojmowanej ciaglosci. Scala je jednak swoista powsciagliwosc w odmalowywaniu dzwiekowego uniwersum, gdyz mgla introwertyzmu okrywa nawet te najbardziej drapieznie brzmiace fonemy jezyka kontrabasowej improwizacji calunem melancholii. Byc moze to wlasnie ona nadaje tej muzyce znaczenie.
Tadeusz Kosiek (Diapazon)
I was not familiar with Chiesa's work, but in the same Creative Sources batch there's an improvised performance where he plays with Jean-Luc Guionnet (here offering his drawings for the layout), Eric La Casa and Emmanuel Petit, which I'll review anytime soon. "Phonèmes" features two improvised studio sessions recorded last november, where Chiesa explores the possibilities of double bass, his instrument of choice. I am always a bit skeptical when it comes to solo improvised recordings, but this French musician manages to pour both the free-flowing qualities of radical improv and a great sense of timing and discipline. "Phonèmes" is indeed an appropriate title, as Chiesa is apparently stripping the sound qualities of his instrument to their very physical components - from intense bowing to sparse thumps. It's obviously not an easy listening record, but there's an underlying, compressed strength to it that makes the experience a rewarding one.
Eugenio Maggi (Chain DLK)
Bassist David Chiesa’s solo Phonemes (CS 053) is a fine statement which compares favorably with recitals like Domenico Sciajno’s Broken Bridge. The first of these two pieces begins with thuds on the body punctuated by occasional scrapes and submarine drones. This relatively sparse palette is explored fully, and Chiesa slowly knits the different pieces together while increasing the aggression and tension. The second piece explores spectral tones even more fully, digging into the contrast between extreme upper register whispers and sepulchral moans. There are also some hot flashes of nastiness and some mournful pizzicato towards the end. Basically, this program explores a few ideas very effectively. Fans of solo bass improvising should definitely hear it.
Jason Bivins (Bagatellen)
A propos de Belvédère...
For 'Belvedere' the involved musicians were invited in one house. What happened in that house is clearly explained by Guionnet in the liner notes: "A bunch of all kinds of microphones are divided in the house and among the landscape around the place. Each of them is plugged into a mixing desk that Éric La Casa is using in real time. The duration of the mix is more or less pre-decided by the 4 of us. During this amount of time, the 3 instrumentalists are going around, in and out of the house, following their own improvised sounds and courses through this open expanse filled by sound-catchers √√ thus we all are working on the construction of a sort of abstract and tentacle-like belvedere plunged into the acoustic space of the place. This cd is the direct result of one of those mix-experiences."
Jean-Luc Guionnet crossed the house with his alto saxophone, Emmanuel Petit with his guitar and David Chiesa carried his double bass with him. If I understand the words of Guionnet correct the musicians did not interact with each other. It is Le Casa behind his mixing desk who blends the solo improvisations into one whole, completed with environmental sounds (birds from time to time). The result is a massive piece of 70 minutes. Yes, they do not only make a good use of space but also of time! Alas it is a very static and amorphe piece and because of this it fails to carry away the listener in the direction of its possibly aimed imagination or vision. Dolf Mulder (Vital)
Although there are several notable examples of what our Editor-In-Chief has dubbed "environmental improvisation", I can say without doubt that this is one of the most accomplished ones I've heard. Microphones were placed in and around the Villa Adriana, in the Ardèche department in southern France, home to a M. René Quinon (to whom the record is dedicated), each feeding a mixer sensitively manoeuvred by Eric La Casa, and the musicians walked in and out following their own instrumental signals, "working on the construction of a sort of an abstract and tentacle-like belvedere plunged into the acoustic space of the place". Amidst the ever wonderful singing of various kinds of birds and the unbelievably tuned buzz of the insects, listening to these rarefied sounds is a privilege. The most striking tones come from Guionnet, who explores resonant corners with his alto saxophone by playing long extracorporeal lines that send those auricular membranes into defence mode (all the while eliciting an interested response from some of his chirping buddies), until he ambles out and around with short staccato blasts that almost catch us by surprise, tiny smoke clouds which the gentle luminosity of the day turns into silky whispers of pliable truth. Chiesa's double bass is a house within the house, his bow murmuring on the strings with religious respect for silence, clicking microsounds like wood cracking and giving under the heat – picture an enlarged sonic photograph of Nikos Veliotis taken by Mark Dresser. Guitarist Petit remains barely visible, yet his feedback heightens the sense of tranquillity and excites wasps and flies, whose constant drone becomes a garden ceremony. Waves of charged string resonance – an infinitesimal fraction of Chatham/Branca-like turbulence – cross paths with Chiesa’s vibrational sensitivity and Guionnet’s ghost notes, skeletal textures reacting to the kind of magic that the Villa Adriana seems to transmit to the artists in their obscure evocation of inscrutable figures who approach, summoned by the sound, but remain too shy to show their handsome faces. The concluding dialogue between Guionnet, a passing plane and the forest voices is finally interrupted by a car stopping nearby, abruptly indicating that it's time to go. Too bad.
Maximo Ricci (Paris Transatlantic)
Belvedere (CS 058) is the title of a single, 70-minute performance by guitarist Emmanuel Petit, alto saxophonist Jean-Luc Guionnet, bassist David Chiesa, and Eric La Casa wielding microphones and mixing desk. It seems similarly in methodology to an earlier disc, Metro Pré St. Gervais, where Guionnet and violinist Dan Warburton descended into the Paris subway with La Casa, who sculpted the environment and the improvisers’ sounds in real-time, the results of which themselves contributed to the overall sound. Here the musicians gathered into a single dwelling, moving about in its space throughout the duration of the piece, exploring its resonances and its limitations in ways so that the cumulative sounding out of this space is quite vivid. Part of the charm of this performance comes from the occasional “intrusion” from the outside – there is the flitting or chirping of birds and, right at the end, some passing trucks. Occasionally the musicians produces identifiable sounds – there are long tones from Guionnet, grumbling arco from Chiesa, spectral feedback from Petit – but in general it sounds like listening to wood grow, or like some organic Eliane Radigue piece. Guionnet is the most dominant voice, playing more demonstrably than the others do, altering his attack consistently – from a buzz to a warble to a shriek – while the others mutter and hum (only seldom coalescing in a tutti swell or giving way to some rough damage from contact mikes). Provocative. Jason Bivins (Bagatellen)
"Belvedere" is one of those site-specific improvised records that you tend to expect from soundmakers like Guionnet or La Casa, but it's surely quite different from the Afflux project. Recorded in 2003 in Villa Adriana, home of the late René Quinon, to whom the disc is dedicated, it features Guionnet at alto saxophone, Petit at guitar, David Chiesa at double bass and La Casa at microphones and mixing desk. The latter's "sound catching" activity was particularly important, as various mics were placed both inside and outside the house, to transform it, to quote Guionnet's liner notes, into "a sort of abstract and tentacle-like belvedere plunged into the acoustic space of the place". The performance is portrayed in this single 71-minute track. What does it sound like? Guionnet utters some painful high-end squeals throughout, while both the guitar and the double-bass opt for more minimal and sparse gestures, or subdued drones, and outdoor bird recordings are merged into the whole. [...] Sometimes in a constructive sense, sometimes not. It is often mysterious and even intimidating, but also has dead weight moments when it just sounds dull and repetitive. It is obviously a matter of subjective perception [duh!], but I think that 71 minutes of this are just too much; what is puzzling and mesmerizing in the first minutes gets boring when repeated for half an hour or so. At the same time, many passages are excellent. [...]
Eugenio Maggi (Chain DLK)
