Félicia Atkinson and Richard Chartier are the cover stars of the latest Portraits GRM edition, each of them approaching concrète minimalism from markedly different perspectives.
Chartier’s ‘Recurrence.Expansion’ offers a sharp contrast, opening with a gaseous drone that channels the energy of Thomas Köner’s earliest, most vital gear. It’s sub bass that grounds this one, rumbling through the composition – which was originally written for 26 speakers – providing focus and weight to Chartier’s pacific sibilances. Serene feedback tones offer an air of mystery, but it’s the tiniest sounds that keep us coming back. Anyone who’s heard Chartier’s run of classic Line albums like ‘Of Surfaces’ and ‘Two Locations’ will know how effortlessly he’s able to enhance the detail of microscopic high-pitched scrapes and crackles, and it’s these elements that sprinkle psychoacoustic dust over his deliberately austere sustained tones.
…Both pieces use abstraction and meticulous sound design to drag us outside the real, and into the sublime.
—boomkat.com
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It is once again a comparison between two leading figures of the experimental scene that increases the precious Portraits GRM catalogue, born from the fruitful collaboration between Shelter Press and INA GRM directed by François J. Bonnet. Those called into question are Félicia Atkinson – multifaceted artist and co-founder together with her husband Bartolomé Sanson of the French label/publishing house involved in the project – and Richard Chartier, pioneer of minimalist sound art at the head of another essential reference such as Line.
The practice of deep listening and silence as an active element in the construction of the sound itinerary are the points of contact of two similar but profoundly different research paths, essential components of the suites proposed here.
In the liminal space constructed by Atkinson to celebrate the mystery of artistic creation – referring specifically to the figure of Georgia O’Keeffe – the absence of sound takes the form of the pause, the void within which the resonance is allowed to reverberate to highlight the details of an aural architecture characterized by essentiality. Minimal harmonic nuclei, sparse piano phrasings and faint electronic luminescences navigate in a neutral environment, resulting in the creation of a meditative flow in which the usual whisper in asmr mode fits. It is a cautious movement in a bewitching hypnagogic state that echoes the ability of art to reveal contents of otherwise invisible reality.
In Richard Chartier’s vision, silence becomes a starting point from which to investigate the spatial qualities of sound and its relationships with the temporal element. Those shaped by him are carefully multifaceted resonant events, which emerge from unfathomable depths, yet another refinement of an exploratory plot comparable to the more rarefied investigations of Thomas Köner, inaugurated with “Series” and already previously remodeled in “Recurrence”. A formally increasingly impeccable underground landscape that deserves to be savored with due attention.
—ondarock.it
