Eric La Casa / Tarab - Les Vibrations Dans la Masse De Son Roulement / Utility (Compost and Height, 2009)

1 Les Vibrations Dans la Masse De Son Roulement 10:04
2 Utility 10:00

Eric La Casa - Les vibrations dans la masse de son roulement
"une masse qui ne se détruit pas, une seule masse compacte, un qui se tient ensemble, un ensemble, une vibration dans la masse, un moteur, qui ne s'effiloche pas, qui ne disparaît pas, une masse tenue, le déroulement tenu, le roulement, la masse est en roulement..." C.Tarkos, "Anachronisme"

Landing platforms, truss, tracks, steps, handrail, ... the complexity of this mechanism is a real opportunity for any listener. Even though the original components (wood...) are progressively replaced with modern ones, like the elevator this machinery still sounds like a heroic invention from the Industrial Revolution (second half of the XIX th century). And while the technology evolves, the idea remains the same.

When I first started listening to these systems, 10 years ago, I paid attention to the concept: mechanical transport of one's body through the city. Opposite to the compound like elevator (a closed space), escalators provide you with open space. Moving in one direction, like traveling through a movie (a cinematic vision), your body is carried slowly into a specific city location. For this short time (from few seconds to several minutes) you are completely devoted "to slide" through the city. Suddenly, your body moves from the static ground... you escalate.

Tarab: utility
Compiled from a series of recordings collected on wanderings through the northern suburbs of Melbourne. The city heard through holes in the ground. Various sized utility holes. Rather than generating a sound of their own, most of the holes I came across act as a trap or filter for the sounds of the city. Their locations, what time I found them and their particular sound qualities dictated what sounds I heard, or in many cases did not hear.
Compost and Height

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Dan Warburton, Jean-Luc Guionnet & Eric La Casa - Métro Pré Saint Gervais (Chloë, 2002)

1 Untitled 20:47
2 Untitled 43:23

Late in the evening of July 10th 2001,Dan Warburton took Jean-Luc Guionnet and Eric La Casa down into the depths of Pré Saint Gervais, a Metro station in the quiet north-east of Paris. Following no pre-determined plan, the three musicians - Warburton on violin, Guionnet on alto sax, La Casa on portable DAT recorder with stereo boom mic - explored the acoustics of the station, riding the elevators, taking the stairs, producing a rich and fascinating sonic map of the space through environmental improvisation. "Metro Pré St Gervais" is a unique and remarkably accessible aural document of free improvisation and sound art.
Chloë

This trio follows an approach similar to Afflux (of which Jean-Luc Guionnet and Éric La Casa represent two-thirds): make a piece of a location. While Afflux uses electro-acoustic devices to interact with a specific location, here Guionnet and Dan Warburton play their respective alto sax and violin. Éric La Casa is recording while staying mobile (unless the musicians are the ones moving around; it is hard to tell). Listeners are in a Paris subway station at a slow time of the day (or night?). Subway trains coming and going and the conversations of passersby provide colors to the piece. Violin and saxophone are mostly used to produce fragile drones, especially in the first of these two untitled pieces. For the first three-quarters of the album, the musicians let the subway tell its story, stepping in whenever things get dull. At times it sounds like a game of cat and mouse, the improvisers hiding the second a person walks by. Their more noise-based sounds (sax gurgles, string scratching) become the sounds of creatures crawling from under the bed when no one is watching. At one point in the last 15 minutes, Warburton and Guionnet engage in a more vehement exchange, spicing things up before simmering down to long, quiet notes again and giving the subway a chance to reintegrate this unusual quartet. Recommended to deep listeners.
All Music Guide

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Éric La Casa - Les Oscillations (Fringes Recordings, 2005)

1 Les Oscillations Part 1 (21:11)
2 (Silence) (1:30)
3 Les Oscillations Part 2 (22:36)

Sur ces deux morceaux Eric La Casa utilise les mêmes matériaux, les prenant à rebours et sans respecter la structure...

The man with the microphone: that might be the apt description of Eric La Casa. You find him near the sea, alongside the river or in the shed behind his house: always listening with a microphone, a pair of headphones and means to record the sounds. Over the years he must have collected a great deal of these recordings, and for 'Les Oscillations part 1 - 2', he uses in both pieces the same sound material. In part 1 this goes from A to Z, and in part 2 from Z to A: the pieces are mirrored to each-other. If one wouldn't know this, it would be hard to notice. In a collage form we come across airplanes, water sounds and rain drops, some of which might be processed on the computer, but some may not be. Perhaps none of the sounds are: you never know with La Casa. This is a soundscape in it's almost purest form, one should just sit back and listen. Let it come like a wave coming to you, near the seaside. Another fine addition to the man's already extensive discography.
Vital Weekly

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Eric La Casa - The Stones Of The Threshold (Ground Fault Recordings, 1999)

1 S'Ombre (17:46)
2 Chrysalithe (20:34)
3 Les Pierres Du Seuil (Parts 1-3) (32:35)

La constellation des musiques pour bande bénéficie encore aujourd'hui du mythe de la nouveauté. Pourtant, comme dans d'autres musiques, les stéréotypes sont plus nombreux que les oeuvres vraiment inspirées, alors que le champ d'innovation du genre est régulièrement nourri de continuels progrès techniques. L'accès facilité des compositeurs à des enregistreurs portables, aux possibilités de restitution extrêmement précises a ouvert une nouvelle voie d'exploration qui permet d'observer et d'exploiter, comme avec un microscope, la trame à l'intérieur de n'importe quel grain sonore. Les ~uvres disponibles sur ces CDs s'inscrivent en partie dans cette démarche.
Dès la pièce "S'ombre" d'Eric LA CASA, on est gagné par la sensation que le compositeur donne du temps au temps, nous permettant de plonger corps et âme dans cet écoulement d'eau. Petit à petit, des minéraux flottants s'entrechoquent et le souffle perd sa couleur naturelle pour prendre celle d'une soufflerie industrielle. Dès le retour au calme. l'auditeur est sorti de la simple jouissance écologique du paysage sonore, pour guetter dans cette nouvelle quiétude le moindre élément sonore ambivalent pouvant devenir agressif: l'écoute, gagnée d.une compréhension supplémentaire, devient moins naïve. Chaque son employé garde sa singularité et le travail de composition se refuse à fondre les corps, irréductiblement différents, dans un même continuum. Cette préoccupation éthique permet d'accorder une attention aux différences dont chaque sonorité est porteuse. Eric LA CASA les a saisi dans la vie et ne les emploie pas dans un projet préconçu. La création musicale est indissociable des rencontres effectuées dès le collectage sonore qui renferme la mémoire, les expériences individuelles et le temps de vie.
Bien que les percussions employées pour "Chrysalithe" soient d'origine ethnique, la pièce est de facture très contemporaine, conjuguant à la fois une volonté de rupture dans l'enchainement des sons ainsi qu'un souci d'homogénéité dans le grain sonore et l'ambiance générale de la pièce. Les harmoniques issues de la voix déjouent les attentes de ïauditeur en quête d'exotisme, créant une atmosphère corrosive. La montée progressive d'une sensation d'effort physique. qui succède, reste le moment le plus délicieux. "Les pierres du seuil - Part I - 3" garde. à travers ses transmutations de coulée, un aspect plus proche du cinéma documentaire. J'imagine parfois les séquences épiques d'un paysage de pluie de Pelechian. Comme dans le cinéma de Tarkovski, la poétique d'Eric LA CASA n'oublie pas d'inclure dans son écoute du monde ses cicatrices, qu'elles soient naturelles ou issues de la civilisation.
Revue et Corrigée

I happen to be a big fan of Eric La Casa's music, which is created entirely from composed recordings of natural sounds such as wind, water, trees, things like that. la Casa explins his guiding philosophy: "Beyond a virtual mapping of the world, I go back to the landscapes of the real, within the geography of being. And I find out that, round the body, the microphone is breathing in all the energies of the shore, where ephemeral and eternal are grazing against each other. All sound fabrics are transmuting into a vibratory ground where both real and reality are slowly unfolding a landscape as yet unheard of. My works are then breathing out the musicality of these invisible reaches. And the listener is patiently taking in everything outside and inside as the Reality of a very same world. My work is looking for this frontier, at the threshold of reality and real, feeling as if there is somewhere else everywhere". Got it?
Intransitive Records

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Eric La Casa - Les Pierres du Seuil 4-7 (Edition ..., 2000)

1 Les Pierres Du Seuil Part 4 (11:45)
2 Les Pierres Du Seuil Part 5 (20:14)
3 Les Pierres Du Seuil Part 6 (17:47)
4 Les Pierres Du Seuil Part 7 (6:50)

Les quatre morceaux de ce disque d'Eric La Casa sont tout entier centrés sur les bruits d'eau (pluie, ruisseau, etc), réarrangés pour mettre en avant l'aspect émotionnel, sans manipulation électronique, mais parfois mêlés au son de divers objets trouvés ou à des instruments...

The latest release from this French sound artist finds his most magnificent and fully realized work to date. Utilizing his usual bevy of sources from wind to water to minerals and properties of the human body such as breathing and skin surface, La Casa has produced a masterful collage of minuscule and enormous events phenomenally bound in an ether of unaffected ambience. Without the use of any studio effects, the sheer palpability of the various textures and the sounds' simultaneous refusal to generate singular identities propagates in the recordings a marked air of unsettling, organic volatility. Yet far from simply documenting the sonic properties of the spaces and events La Casa has utilized, these painstakingly recorded and mastered sound events give way to a dreamy if not sometimes disturbed immersion in unmitigated aural space.
Edition ...

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Eric La Casa - Air.Ratio (Sirr, 2006)

1 Calibration: The 30 Recordings In 1 Minute (1:00)
Conduit Droit Rectangulaire Isolé
2 European Hospital Georges Pompidou (Paris XV) Car Park (2:00)
Registre
3 European Hospital Georges Pompidou (Paris XV) Central Street (2:00)
4 European Hospital Georges Pompidou (Paris XV) Corridor (2:00)
5 European Hospital Georges Pompidou (Paris XV) Corridor (2:00)
Diffuseur Linéaire Sur Conduit
6 Institute Pasteur (Paris XV) Corridor (1:59)
Bouche d'Extraction Type VMC
7 Apartment (Ground Floor--Paris XX) Bathroom (2:00)
8 Radio France (Paris XVI) Toilet (2:00)
9 Radio France (Paris XVI) Toilet (2:00)
10 Radio France (Paris XVI) Corridor (2:00)
11 Radio France (Paris XVI) Toilet (2:00)
12 Radio France (Paris XVI) Toilet (2:00)
13 Radio France (Paris XVI) Toilet (2:00)
14 Radio France (Paris XVI) Toilet (2:00)
15 European Hospital Georges Pompidou (Paris XV) Corridor (2:00)
Plénum
16 Radio France (Paris XVI) Corridor (2:00)
Bouche d'Extraction Type VMC
17 Apartment (15th Floor--Paris XX) Bathroom (2:00)
18 Restaurant Le Chiberta (Paris VIII) Toilet (2:00)
19 National Public Library François Mitterrand (Paris XIII) Toilet (2:00)
20 National Public Library François Mitterrand (Paris XIII) Toilet (1:59)
21 National Public Library François Mitterrand (Paris XIII) Toilet (2:00)
22 Contemporary Art Center Georges Pompidou (Paris II) Toilet (2:00)
23 European Hospital Georges Pompidou (Paris XV) Corridor (2:00)
24 European Hospital Georges Pompidou (Paris XV) Toilet (2:00)
25 European Hospital Georges Pompidou (Paris XV) Toilet (1:59)
26 European Hospital Georges Pompidou (Paris XV) Toilet (2:00)
Conduit Droit Rectangulaire Isolé
27 European Hospital Georges Pompidou (Paris XV) Car Park (2:00)
28 European Hospital Georges Pompidou (Paris XV) Car Park (2:00)
29 Cité De La Musique--Vinci Carpark (Paris XIX) (1:59)
Diffuseur Plafonnier
30 Contemporary Art Center Georges Pompidou (Paris II) (2:00)
Bouche d'Admission
31 National Public Library François Mitterrand (Paris XIII) Esplanade (1:59)
-
32 Calibration: The 30 Recordings In 1 Minute (1:00)
33 (Silence): 1 Minute (0:59)

Ce qui est chouette avec les bouches d'aération, c'est qu'elles font du drone naturellement...

It all started in 1994, in a bathroom. An air vent above the bathtub attracted my attention. There, in the dusty environment, air became noise, music. Microphones were brought into contact with this acoustic territory to transmit the sonority of the aeraulic device directly. Since that day, I have been attentive to the flow of air in the modern architecture. This CD presents a selection of sound recordings made in Paris in buildings of various ages and dimensions. Without seeking to itemize mechanized ventilation systems in any methodical manner, I was interested in documenting their sonic and musical qualities. My approach wasn't strictly scientific, but nor was it primarily musical. All the sound recordings were made using a boom and of a pair of condenser microphones. Direct contact with the material was avoided. The recordings were subsequently assembled and equalized to optimize their abstract qualities, i.e. I sought to emphasize only sonic particularities related to the acoustics of the point of listening, not events related to the external movements (sounds of doors, or voices): a listening devoid of both context and reference.
(Eric La Casa, 2006)

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