Jean-Luc Guionnet - Axène (Ground Fault Recordings, 2000)

1 Ivraie/Baragnes 27:14
2 Axène 15:54
3 Ressac/Ressac 28:13

Jean-Luc Guionnet, born in Lyon now living in Paris, has formally studied Electa-acoustic music at the Boulogne-Billancourt Conservatory as well as the Pantin Conservatory in France. While working on his Bachelors Degree at the Sorbonne School of Art in Paris, Jean-Luc started recording with good friend Andrè Almuro. Soon after while working on his Masters degree he started working with fellow French Electra-acoustic musicians, Éric Cordier and Éric La Casa. In addition to music he has worked in the experimental film field.

Jean-Luc Guionnet is not a highly prolific recording artist; only about 16 recordings to over a 10 year span, but the quality of his recordings are top notch. Two of the recordings on Axène were recorded 10 years ago and were never released. After first hearing them I was amazed that the have never been heard by the public. They are absolutely brilliant recordings that the public has unfortunately missed out on for all these years. I am very proud to bring these recordings to the surface for all to hear.

Axène is catagorized as Series I, but don't let that fool you. While a good part of this CD is rather quiet, it does build to a fever pitch while never losing its smoothness.
Erik Hoffman

"It is a little strange to find a CD by French electroacoustic artist Jean-Luc Guionnet on the noise label Ground Fault, but then again musique concrète can be seen from an avant-garde noise perspectives. The three extended (16 to 28 minutes) works included on Axène were created between 1989 and 1996 and had not been released before. In "Ivraie/Baragnes, " recorded for an André Almuro film by the same title, and "Ressac/Ressac", the composer favors textures over plasticity. Both pieces have drones, water and wood sounds, at their basis. Non-linear, these sound events are meshed together to form the soundtrack of a trek of some kind. Concrete and synthesized sounds intervene, arousing new imageries. "Ressac/Ressac" is embedded in a strong ocean theme (ressac = undertow), waves of sounds slowly approaching to gracefully come crashing at the listener's feet. Slotted between these two works, "Axène" becomes all the more academic and cold. This piece follows more traditional esthetics of sound sculpting, INA-GRM-style. It lacks movement and ambition to really captivate. But the two longer pieces are definitely worth hearing, especially for those favoring atmospheric electroacoustics"
François Couture


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Jean-Luc Guionnet - Tirets (Hibari Music, 2004)

1 Block-Werk & Mutations 11:19
2 Soufflets 8:46
3 Abrégé 13:30
4 Cromorne & Fonds 14:29
5 Gravures 25:25

The organ has an ancient provenance, its origin being traceable to the development of a keyboard-based water organ, the hydraulus, not later than the third century BC. Over the course of its long history, it has from time to time been an important instrument of improvisation, not least in the nineteenth century when church organ music was one of the few areas of western music to avoid the pernicious influence of a newly hegemonic ideology that conceived of a musical work as an entity produced by genius composers and existing in finished form prior to performance. More recently, the organ has ceased to occupy a prominent place in improvised music, but there are still intermittent uses of it by contemporary improvisers. One musician who has shown a serious interest in the improvisatory possibilities of the instrument is Jean-Luc Guionnet, most notably to date on Pentes, a 2002 release on A Bruit Secret of recordings made in Notre Dame des Champs in Paris in April 2001. Now Hibari have released Tirets, a second set of recordings of improvisations performed during the same sessions. The newly available material finds Guionnet again eliciting a broad spectrum of unorthodox sounds from the organ, including seismic eruptions in the bass register, quiet strangulated whistles, drones, and unbroken atonal sequences of notes separated by stimulatingly large intervals. Refreshingly, the music avoids all temptations to indulge in sonic spirituality, pursuing instead a series of fascinating, resolutely godless and even desacralizing divagations through the contingencies of imagination, equipment and place. Evidently, there is still life left in the organ as a vehicle for freethinking improvisation, and it is to be hoped that as the processes of secularisation continue, at least in Europe and Scandinavia, to undermine religion as both a guiding ideology of social institutions and a meaningful belief system at the level of the individual, the opportunities for radical improvisers to utilize the instrument will increase. At length, perhaps, the ever more deserted churches will be filled not with delusional paeans to the glory of imagined transcendental perfection but the sounds of a tentative and fallible investigation of sublunary possibilities.
Paris Transatlantic

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Jean-Luc Guionnet & Pascal Battus - Toc Sine (Why Not Ltd, 2007)

1 Toc Sine 44:54

In terms of music the final release might be the most interesting one. 'Electrics and electronics', recorded in Montreal two years ago, this improvisation duet between Jean-Luc Guionnet and one Pascal Battus is also a pretty noise related affair in which a turntable is used and abused. The two keep the noise under control quite a bit, letting things hiss, scratch, beep and occasionally things go out of control, which is o.k. as it fits the scheme quite nicely... it makes it well up in terms of improvised noise.
Vital Weekly

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Jean-Luc Guionnet - Axene (Ground Fault Recordings, 2000)

1 Ivraie/Baragnes 27:14
2 Axène 15:54
3 Ressac/Ressac 28:13

Jean-Luc Guionnet, born in Lyon now living in Paris, has formally studied Electa-acoustic music at the Boulogne-Billancourt Conservatory as well as the Pantin Conservatory in France. While working on his Bachelors Degree at the Sorbonne School of Art in Paris, Jean-Luc started recording with good friend Andrè Almuro. Soon after while working on his Masters degree he started working with fellow French Electra-acoustic musicians, Éric Cordier and Éric La Casa. In addition to music he has worked in the experimental film field.

Jean-Luc Guionnet is not a highly prolific recording artist; only about 16 recordings to over a 10 year span, but the quality of his recordings are top notch. Two of the recordings on Axène were recorded 10 years ago and were never released. After first hearing them I was amazed that the have never been heard by the public. They are absolutely brilliant recordings that the public has unfortunately missed out on for all these years. I am very proud to bring these recordings to the surface for all to hear.

Axène is catagorized as Series I, but don't let that fool you. While a good part of this CD is rather quiet, it does build to a fever pitch while never losing its smoothness. Erik Hoffman

"It is a little strange to find a CD by French electroacoustic artist Jean-Luc Guionnet on the noise label Ground Fault, but then again musique concrète can be seen from an avant-garde noise perspectives. The three extended (16 to 28 minutes) works included on Axène were created between 1989 and 1996 and had not been released before. In "Ivraie/Baragnes, " recorded for an André Almuro film by the same title, and "Ressac/Ressac", the composer favors textures over plasticity. Both pieces have drones, water and wood sounds, at their basis. Non-linear, these sound events are meshed together to form the soundtrack of a trek of some kind. Concrete and synthesized sounds intervene, arousing new imageries. "Ressac/Ressac" is embedded in a strong ocean theme (ressac = undertow), waves of sounds slowly approaching to gracefully come crashing at the listener's feet. Slotted between these two works, "Axène" becomes all the more academic and cold. This piece follows more traditional esthetics of sound sculpting, INA-GRM-style. It lacks movement and ambition to really captivate. But the two longer pieces are definitely worth hearing, especially for those favoring atmospheric electroacoustics" François Couture

Ground Fault Recordings

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Phéromone - Disparlure (Corpus Hermeticum, 2000)

1 Disparlure Part 1 32:10
2 Disparlure Part 2 40:44

Eric Cordier et Jean-Luc Guionnet nous ont donné à entendre quelques unes des propositions expérimentales les plus intéressantes de ces dernières années, avec " Tore " paru sur Shambala et Synapses sur le label Selektion. Aujourd’hui Corpus Hermeticum sort le disque de PHEROMONE, trio avec Eric Cordier (vielle à roue et traitement électronique) et Jean-Luc Guionnet (citera, chiftelia, bois, métal et micros contact), auxquels s’est joint Pascal Battus (guitare environnée). Trio d’improvisation définitivement sorti de l’approche old school, sans pour autant sacrifier à la tendance minimaliste actuelle. Comme la plupart des disques parus sur Corpus H. celui-ci est traversé par l’énergie du rock. Pour PHEROMONE le petit Robert donne cette définition en biologie : sécrétion externe produite par un organisme, qui stimule une réponse physiologique ou comportementale chez un autre membre de la même espèce. L’ improvisation jouée comme réponse à une stimulation sonore de l’autre. Ce qui semble dire qu’il n’y a pas de réponses imaginaires mais seulement antérieures (de l’ordre du réflexe, codifiée). Ce qui pourrait être une remise en cause (ou tout au moins un doute émis à propos) du caractère déclaré libertaire de l’improvisation ou des musiques improvisées, une façon de dire qu’elles comportent un caractère idiomatique, un déterminisme culturel ? Mais il resterait du désir, du collectif, de la circulation, de l ’échange, de l’un à l’autre, l’improvisation comme érotique. Longue pièce enregistrée par Eric La Casa et Pierre-Henri Thiebaut Disparlure ", développe des paysages sonores bruissants, sons éclatés dans l’espace se répondant à la façon de ces phéromones, atteignant une apparente cacophonie de nuit d’été. Les textures sont denses et travaillées de torsions et de déchirures, de brûlures et d’implosions, la matière ne reste jamais inerte, le travail incessant. Disque de grincements, de matières ferrugineuses, lourdes, très denses. On y entend quelque chose de l’ordre de l’animalité, un peu à la façon d’une nourriture que se disputeraient des coléoptères voraces, déchiquetant, amputant, déchirant cette masse sonique. L’intérêt pour les sources sonores (de la guitare environnée ou de la vielle à roue) disparaît, semble secondaire, une belle confusion règne là, riche et non maigre, mais pourtant coupante, dangereuse. Les mains tremblent, cherchent, fouillent dans la matière à la recherche de ce son d’or qui fascine tant Charlemagne Palestine, mais ici comme pris dans le déchet, le rebus de la chose musicale. Quête alchimique de la merdre en or. Disparlure ", un bégaiement à la Christian Prigent, il y a de l’anamorphose dans la musique du trio, une torsion du musical dans le bruit monstrueux, comme une mise en vibration du réel. Prigent parlant de l’anamorphose en dit : " Son intérêt réside dans ce geste symptomatique, qui désavoue implicitement la réalité que serait censée figurer la représentation codée " . Est-ce de la musique (cette grande écriture codée des sons d’une société à un certain stade de son développement) ou plus simplement un moment de vie, du temps parlé ? Après le trio Noetinger / Marchetti / Werchowski, Bruce Russell continue d’ ouvrir son label aux expériences de l’improvisation de la vieille Europe, sortant la musique de l’impérialisme culturel anglo-saxon. Il y aurait un autre monde ?
Michel Henritzi

This is the first release from the French Trio Pheromone, released on Bruce Russell's Corpus Hermeticum label. This trio makes spare and expansive soundscapes using guitar, hurdy gurdy, electronics, contact mics and various electro-acoustic devices. This single piece (tracked as 2 tracks) was recorded live and mixed by Eric La Casa and Pierre-Henri Thiebaut at home. The band sets up in the corners of the room and surrounds the audience, while enveloping them in an abstract cloud of stuttering samples, rhythmic pulses, clicks and scrapes, hums and whirs, buzz and skree, strum and clatter that all seemingly follow some mysterious and non linear-narrative. Gorgeously difficult.
Aquarius Records

The analogy is with the functioning of the eponymous insect hormones, which transmit messages to other insects at a distance. The audible messages of the three musicians transmit signals from one player to the next, with the audience hearing the interaction of the signals in 'surround sound'. This is particularly apt as the overall effect of the music is of a darkened environment full of animal calls, as unseen predators stalk small mechanical prey and flocks of metal birds perch in the tinfoil trees.
Discogs

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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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