Jacques Chabot

Link to the website of the forthcoming Acxel 2 : www.acxel2.com

"The fringe thinkers" present: Mad music

While crossing the river, we felt formless objects under our feet. Yielding, smooth sculptures, with no particular use and probably designed for the sheer pleasure by mad artists. It is only then that we fully realized that we must shape reality at all costs in our own fashion. It is the only thing to do since there is no proper instruction guide for anything. This is why everything must continually be reinvented. Even though brand new stuff seldom pleases, one must keep on grinding, mashing, bending, melting tangible and intangible, concrete and abstract matter; because if living consists of doing and doing again what has already been done and done again, we will have lived in vain, and others could have done everything in our place. If on the other hand, we are the ones who draw the map and cut it ourselves in pieces that we scatter, we alone will own the key opening the adjoining door: the only place where dreams come to and end.

« Les penseurs à côté » présentent : Des musiques de fous

En traversant la rivière, nous avons senti des objets informes sous la plante de nos pieds. Des sculptures molles et douces qui ne servent à rien et qui ont probablement été conçues pour le pur plaisir de la chose par des artistes fous. Ce n’est qu’alors que nous avons pleinement réalisé qu’il faut à tout prix pétrir la réalité à notre façon. C’est la seule chose à faire et il n’existe pas vraiment de mode d’emploi pour quoi que ce soit. C’est pourquoi tout doit être réinventé à chaque instant. Même si les choses nouvelles plaisent rarement, il faut continuer à moudre, à broyer, à tordre, à faire fondre la matière tangible et intangible, concrète et abstraite; parce que si vivre consiste à faire et à refaire ce qui a déjà été fait et refait, nous aurons vécu en vain et d’autres auraient pu tout faire à notre place. Si par contre, nous dessinons la carte et la découpons nous-mêmes en morceaux que nous éparpillons, nous serons les seuls à posséder la clé qui ouvre la porte d’à côté : le seul endroit où les rêves sont achevés.

Jacques Chabot – Brief musical résumé

I have been composing electronic music (experimental, ambient, post-industrial) since 1986.

From then onwards, I have released several albums, notably on the defunct “Apocryphe” label.

My musical production is divided in two phases: 1986-1993 and from 1994 until now.

During the first phase, I mostly created experimental music, plus very melodic pieces.

In the course of the second phase, I acquired an Acxel resynthesizer, which at last enabled me to make the most of the composition and interpretation method I had designed with less performing equipment. In some ways, my new album “Des musiques de fous” is both continuity and a culmination as regards this method. It also marks the starting point of a third phase, “Les installations instantanées” that should result in at least a new album in 2009.

In 2000, I released an album entitled “Musique pour un monde trop fragmenté” on the German label “Prion music”. This is my only CD wholly devoted to ambient music.

COMPOSITION AND INTERPRETATION: TECHNICAL NOTES

I have been using an extraordinary device for several years: an Acxel resynthesizer. This musical instrument serves as a synthesizer with subtractive synthesis and additive synthesis as well as a resynthesizer, and has an unparalleled capacity (256 independent oscillators that are programmable in real time). Québec engineer Pierre Guilmette created it. About ten or so working Acxels can still be found worldwide.

Thanks to this device, I developed an interpretation technique that enables me, each time I play a piece, to add improvisations to it while keeping its “essence” intact. The Acxel is so powerful that I no longer need sequencers and I merely use the keyboard as an “On-Off” trigger. After I play some notes, I activate the sustain mode and interpret the music by “sculpting” the sounds on the Acxel’s touch screen. Each sound therefore becomes a complete music that can hold several melodic or noise-like themes. In addition, in order to increase tenfold the power of the device, I sample the sounds that do not need to be modified in real time.

I developed this composition and interpretation method some 13 years ago. However, putting it into practice before owning the Acxel was far more limited.

ARCHAEOLOGY and MUSIC...
Besides composing electronic music, I am an archaeologist (researcher, professor). I specialize in the technological and traceological (use-wear) study of prehistoric stone tools from North Mesopotamia (Syria, Iraq, Turkey/4th and 5th millenniums) and the Neolithic in the South Caucasus (Armenia/6th millennium).

There is a close link between my archaeological investigation, done for the most part with a metallurgical microscope, and my musical experiments, during which I equally isolate certain acoustic cells to better reveal them and generate collisions between them. Both involve exploring: whether it is a sound or a stone tool with a microscope, the aim is to bring out its full potential.

Discography

Les contes invisibles vol. 1 (1986); Les contes invisibles vol. 2 (1992); Les contes invisibles vol. 3 (1993); L’éternel Retour (1989); Laissez-nous cueillir nos roses avant la pluie (1991); La Grammaire des coïncidences (1992); Musique pour un monde trop fragmenté (2000); Mad Music/Des musiques de fous (2007)

Contact: [email protected]