Music:
Member Since: 3/1/2006
Band Website: 3particles.com
Band Members: me
Influences: Zoviet France, The Hafler Trio, Asmus Tietchens, Throbbing Gristle, Bernard Parmegiani, William Basinski, Bernhard Günter, Steve Roden, Nurse with Wound, John Duncan, Pan Sonic, Mika Vanio, COH, Main, Elaine Radigue, Francis Dhomont, Taylor Deupree, Conrad Schnitzler, Sogar... influences are all around us...
Sounds Like: SOME RANDOM REVIEWS OF SOME RELEASES:Previously known for his use of frequencies so delicate that even headphones don't adequately render them, Richard Chartier has steadily been building his albums into denser propositions. But he hasn't given up on the minimalist agenda. On the exemplary Incidence, Chartier continues to crack the monochromatic surfaces of his sounds with subtle compositional gestures that deftly turn his work away from the clinical and towards the paranoiac. The album starts with a focused hiss of white noise that succumbs to a low-end rumble, like idling heavy machinery rattling architectonic forms. A chorus of acute frequencies and a slow motion current of grey sound steadily build over the course of 15 to 20 minutes. The interaction of each layer of sustained sound makes Incidence compelling, and one of Chartier's finest works.
[ Wire, UK ]after several releases by artists of the collective around raster-noton on american label line, a long-outstanding invitation was issued into the opposite direction. so last but not least the present release is an expression of long-lasting artistic ties between both labels.
in the greyness heavy waves begin to glide into the one-hour work. they swell and flood a vacuum. chartier is able to intensify this maelstrom in long and graceful moves. in a majestic and subtle manner he creates a subsonic vastness, capturing the listener, disconnecting him from the irrelevant reality. the end mirrors the beginning - revealing the idea of an endless space in an endless composition. finally incidence is a sound stream seeking to transform time into a certain timelessness.
richard chartier runs the label line, following the traditions of trente oiseaux by focusing on minimalist and not beat-oriented sound experiments. his compositions often test the limits of auditory perceptibility. in this way chartier concentrates on tiniest changes within seemingly static sound masses.
[ PRESS RELEASE - Raster-Noton, Germany ]Room40's Editions series continues in style with a superb 20 minute piece from uber-minimalist Richard Chartier. His pedigree speaks for itself and, to be fair, the samples are never going to do its incredibly subtle tones justice... suffice to say it's one of his more high-frequency-based works that concentrates on a sense of sensory dislocation and mind-filling sonic overload as well as his trademark quiet textures which are always ever-present in the background. Always understated and coherent, his work is fascinating and explores territiory that others would find too intense. I'm recommending this (as I'm sure you'd expect) but be aware that it could conceivably be regarded as one of his more challenging recent works. Superb though.
[ Smallfish, UK ]This limited CD documents a performance by sound
artists Taylor Deupree and Richard Chartier alonside
an exhibition of the photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto's
Seascapes. These images are
the same but different, capturing, from some ineffable
vantage point, a few miles of unbroken ocean, a
horizon, an occluded reflecting sky. They are at once
featureless and teeming with detail, luxuriously
immersive and impenetrably distant.Chartier and Deupree's response to the mute challenge
of Sugimoto's photographs is equally spare and
delicately nuanced. Specification.Fifteen is
45 minutes of felicitous subtlety - composed of
featherweight skeins of sound, it's a perfect balance
of spare austerity and filigree pleasure. For fully
five minutes, in fact, the sound is just the barest
and most ghostly of whispers. Gradually, almost
imperceptibly, the first hints of definition emerge.
There's a low, calming hiss of indeterminate origin
and a softly keening tone like the gentle slide of
metal on glass. Over the course of the piece, these
elements ebb and flow, rising and falling in volume,
and gradually gathering soft, echoing clouds around
them.They might be sparse, but Chartier and Deupree have
chosen their ambiguous details with care. They serve
as a reminder that, for all their opnness to the
elements, Sugimoto's Seascapes remain a
strikingly articficial undertaking - a formal project
whose blend of simplicity and complexity rivals that
of Bartlebooth, the seascape painter whose circular
pursuit of oblivion lies at the heart of Georges
Perec's Life, A User Manual
[ Wire, UK ]I had just finished annoying myself by listening to some verbose, pretentious wannabe and was pretty discouraged; immediately after starting to enjoy this wonderful album by Chartier, my whole being felt much better. Tracing is minimalism with a purpose, in the strictest meaning of this abused term: an intimate procession of gaseous particles starts from silence to gradually penetrate our psyche, like a necessary guide helping through a hazy environment with a fog lamp. The orbital period of this impalpable shroud of frequencies is extremely slow, giving our body the chance to adapt to a new condition in which alertness and tension decrease inexorably until reaching the limit between conscious and subliminal. As it often happens to yours truly, the awesome radiance of these recurring icy daydreams is perfectly contextual in a cold, grey gloomy morning where the faint light coming from outside seems to decompose and refract very distant, afraid of disturbing the perfection of Chartier's memorable piece, for sure one of his very best.
[ Touching Extremes, Italy ]This is Richard Chartier’s latest album and in my opinion his best yet as these five tracks come across as much fuller, more involving and more developed than any of his previous material. Bearing resemblance to the aforementioned William Basinski in a floatation tank, or the more spacious and glacial works of Thomas Koner, this is an album with sub aquatic depth. I must say that as a follower of Chartier’s work I was certainly very surprised when I heard this, but such a move comes as very welcome to these ears. This is an essential release for minimalists and dark ambient overlords alike – simply stunning.
[ Boomkat, UK ]Richard Chartier has been a key figure in minimal electronica since the mid-1990s. Albums such as a hesitant fold (1999), series (2000) and decisive forms (2001) laid the foundations for a large catalogue of remarkably fastidious music. His stylistic signature gelled with these recordings—it's a hushed aesthetic that shelters a powerful compositional vision.
Even when pitched to the fringes of audibility, Chartier's sounds have an extraordinarily seductive quality—the ear is pulled to their unusual contours. Perhaps it's a sign of his fastidiousness that re'post'postfabricated is not a straight reissue of his postfabricated, put out by the Microwave label in 1999. Chartier wa unhappy about the way the album sounded—his sleeve note to re'post'postfabricated points out that the original sounds were compromised by the analogue transfers to minidisc. So the first CD in this double set is a reconstruction of the original recordings.
There are 23 tracks, ranging in length from ten seconds to ten minutes, but most of them are very short. Rather than the careful, episodic structures that he'd go on to work with, these are mainly single-idea pieces: a loop or a sound is pursued through minute variations. A number of tracks are barem unadorned click pieces; others explore a single timbre or a nuanced use of panning or delay; many have a crunchier, more abrasive edge than is usual with Chartier. While the music lacks the ambition and authority of an album such as series, it has all the conceptual clarity that goes to make Chartier's music such a vital presence on the minimal scene.
That scene gathers on the second CD, which contains reworkings of source files from the project by such luminaries as COH, Frank Bretschneider, Asmus Tietchens, Goem, Taylor Deupree, alva noto, Matmos and Steve Roden. Brining such distinct styles into contact with Chartier's minimalism has led to some highly persuasive work. Bretschneider revamps a click piece; alva noto brings Chartier into the orbit of Nicolai's perfect-beat pop project; Matmos' "Woofer Blower" takes issue with the introversion of Chartier's style; Taylor Deupree provides a gorgeously shimmering piece. On the last track, Chartier himself revisits his fragmented early style with a piece in the more continuous vein that he's often favoured lately. His body of work is now too diverse even for his own Overview album to give a plausible overview; this set provides something else—a snapshot of the continuities in his work and an inkling of the musician's place in a wider community of electronic minimalists.
[ The Wire, UK ]Both William Basinski and Richard Chartier have been digging through their archival matter as of late. In fact,
the majority of Basinski's recent output is the result of his discoveries, including his profound Disintegration Loops
series. Chartier, meanwhile, based his recent production Archival1991 upon two older pieces evolved into a single minded
composition of subtle disquiet. When the two began working on this eponymous collaboration, again they delved into the vaults
for inspiration and reworkable materials.The first of the two lengthy tracks contains elements by Chartier dating from 1991-1992, merged with sympathetic Basinski
material that he had been composing for James Elaine. Here, slowly evolving bleak drones give way to similarly constructed
forms, sprinkled with low impact fluttering events. Where the first track retains a stoic uniformity through its subtle
shiftings, the second flickers and quivers with a comparitively greater flair for the dramatic, thanks to their reworking
of Basinski's tape loops, which inject a cyclical movement to the ghostly ambience lying below. Within these filigree wisps
of sound, Basinski's pathos laden romanticism matches perfectly with Chartier's spartan reductivism. Hopefully their marraige
of unique voices will continue in the future.
[ The Wire, UK ]
Record Label: 12k / LINE / Spekk / Raster-Noton / Trente Oiseaux
Type of Label: Indie
