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Automatisme
Non-representation Field (download track) Constellation - 2021
Michael Panontin
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The first incarnation of Constellation's Corona Borealis Longplay Singles Series during the months of October and November 2020 was phenomenal. The weekly experiment was not just an aesthetic success, with its excellent audio/visual projects from the likes of Fly Pan Am, JOYFULTALK and, especially, T.Gowdy (his stunning 'Emerald Teeth' collab with L.A.-based videographer Kai Luen Liang is a must-watch). It is also a worthy social endeavour for all involved, a "pandemic/post-capitalist response" that gives 100% of the digital revenue to the artists, a sort of win/win/win for all involved.
Automatisme's 'Non-representation Field' is easily the most compelling track to come out of the series' 2021 iteration thus far, hardly a surprise to these ears given the addictively unsettling sounds of 2018's Transit long-player. William Jourdain, the Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec-based producer behind Automatisme's music, recorded the track on a Buchla modular synthesizer during a residency at Stockholm's Elektronmusikstudion.
Like much of Jourdain's work, 'Non-representation Field' explores the same sort of drony, ambient textures that those familiar with the Mille Plateaux catalogue will immediately recognize. (Automatisme recorded a twelve-track collection, Alter-, for the label back in the fall of 2020.) But of course what really makes this worth checking out is the impeccable pairing of music and video, in this case the formidable talents of Marilou Lyonnais Archambault. The Montreal videographer brings the textural nature of Jourdain's music to life, quite literally in this case, by projecting images of the natural environment onto creased and crumpled paper - "le froissement" - an effect that in her words "evok[es] the iridescence of sounds and images and the dualism of nature and machine".
'Non-representation Field' is a stunningly beautiful work and the perfect respite from this mid-winter/mid-pandemic lockdown.
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Automatisme
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