Nour Symon; Roxane Desjardins – Je suis calme et enragé-e
Ensemble Supermusique; Collectif Ad Lib
ambiences magnétiques AM 281 CD (ambiances-magnetiques.bandcamp.com/album/je-suis-calme-et-enrag-e)
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Listening as I was walking, I thought there were helicopters overhead, the overt voice interplay masking the underlying drones, unable to fully cloak them. At this point in time, I am aware that what I was hearing was Ensemble SuperMusique directed by Nour Symon, as they, along with the vocalists, realized their graphic scores (which were not in front of me).
While the history of improvised music accompanying poetry (and/or vice versa) is endlessly rich and contains multitudes of multitudes, Symon’s piece scratches out the lines between poet, subject, musician, recitation, and performance until everything in sight is swept up in a furious blaze of microscopic events and fleeting collective gestures. Look not for meditative passages that gradually blossom into cathartic brushstrokes of melodicism; perhaps do not look at all, merely brace senses to receive. Accordions coalesce into synthetic tones that contract as they briefly become timbrally indistinguishable from a croak of a stringed instrument’s bow which clashes with the overtones in organically distorted vocals while moans echo, carrying just enough that the dimensions of the room can be mapped. Distinguishing features between how sound is produced becomes more of a rough outline as sonic details proliferate, in a manner that comments on the world surrounding them.
One can, as I have, reach a brief idiosyncratic alcove in the music while gazing upon the apparition of Ontario Place, confident that the resilience of people and the impermanence of public space are anything but antithetical.
