Bernard Fort: Fractals/Brian Fever (RECOLLECTION GRM)
Fantastic addition to the Recollection GRM archival project.
Largely based in Lyon, Fort’s compositions (1985-present) explore the boundaries between abstraction and figuration, the natural and the technological. As a professor of electroacoustic music at the Faculté de musicologie of the Université Lumière Lyon 2 and École nationale de musique (Villeurbanne), Fort has also immersed himself in natural soundscapes and ornithology, which has impacted his more recent work (see Compositions Ornithologiques (1996). One can also hear these latter interests on Brain Fever, featured on this LP.
From the one-sheet:
"‘Fractals’ (1981): Composed at the GMVL from December 1979 to September 1981, this work was commissioned by Fnac. Fractals are mathematical oddities that, when crossing our path, turn the smallest island into an immensity to be explored. ‘Fractals’ is a series of short studies, all based on the same sound source. Seeking in the sound and its very logic a proposal upon which a construction is elaborated, each Fractal remains open and is a mere fragment of itself. "Fractals", music pieces sculpted in four dimensions, are vast microcosms that can only be inhabited by the mind. Each "Fractal" can be approached from several angles, far, near, etc. Some can be listened to at different speeds, forwards or backwards. ‘Fractals’: amorphous and endless music pieces whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.
’Brain Fever’ (2017): Wherever you may be in the forest of South India, the Brain Fever bird, together with the Seven Sisters, literally gets into your head. Whether it be early morning, daytime, or nighttime, amidst the stridulations of insects, its song utterly reflects Indian life: sonorous, noisy, insistent, dense, overcrowded, mobile, swarming, frantic, overheated, deprived of rest and sleep. ‘Brain Fever’ echoes sonic images caught in the Aurovillian forest, near Pondicherry, and rich fragments of improvisations made in Lyon on analog sound synthesis or feedback devices, the kind Fort used to do in the first GMVL studios. ‘Brain Fever’ is dedicated to Sofia Jannok, a musician and sàmi singer.”
*We dedicate an entire section to Recollection GRM in the shop, so reach out if you are looking for other titles in that series. Please also investigate the Groupe Musiques Vivantes de Lyon (GMVL) imprint, which Fort founded with Marc Favre.