Toward West is a “road record”. As the very first piece explains it, it is about going from a point to another…
Toward West is a “road record”. As the very first piece explains it, it is about going from a physical point to another, thus drawing a line on a map. In that case the journey actually links two points of a very great interest to me, related by a strong history of both visual and musical arts, I mean the city of New York (shall I say downtown New York to be precise…), and the Spiral Jetty on the great salt lake, famous piece of american Land artist robert Smithson. I guess this line (that actually appears to be straight on the map) drawn between thoses two references does refine my own artistic personality.
I tried to consider the album as a whole piece and not as the succession of pieces, eventhought each track has its own autonomy. I would say there are 5 major pieces constituting the project, that are the longest and only instrumental ones. Then two “songs” introduce and kind of close the album (the voice is actually not sung but read), giving a more pop-performance feel to the project, wich to me makes a perfect balance with the long and majors pieces. Finally, I decided to rest the ears of my courageous listeners by creating transitions, using figurative yet not too narrative sounds, putting a clear reference to cinematography that fits with the title of the album and its definition as a “road record”, probably meant to be heard in a car while driving…
I have been looking for creating the feeling of this displacement, by trying to play around relativity of time and space when it comes to consider it in relation to music. For that purpose, I have been trying to blur the edges of short and long distances as well as durations, wich results in considering memory, and oblivion, as part of my music.
The first piece I composed for this album (that is Elasticity, now at the latest position on the track list !) is based on the very obvious equivalence of a note as two half-notes and four quarter-notes, etc…this is actually alsmost as far as my knowledge in writting scores goes ! But it is also, to me, a very solid base for putting sonorous masses together, wich I tried to do, so I started from the classical writing of thoses scores. Melody and harmony disappeared in order to let the structure and this equivalence expand within a specific territory of sound.
In other pieces of this album, I developped this idea and made it a little more complex. As I said I did write the pieces using scores to create some kind of solid elementary bricks. But then I distorted them by the super-imposition of the score-brick onto itself, using classical shift processes, and playing with the plasticity aspect of sound itself since each imposition has its own sound texture eventhought it is the same score being read.
I believe, in consideration to what I just said, that the difference beteen sound and time is that one is plastic (it can be changed in its texture), wether the other is elastic (it can be expanded or contracted but will finally return to its original state). Theese definitions are parts of my researches.
But the most important to me is how sound can be delivered so one can experiment a particular feeling of time flowing, that is, to me, what means “rhythm” or “pace”. Every music, if good, should to me be the vehicule of a particular pace (understood as I said), and thus become an unique way of living and experimenting one’s own presence to the world.
It still is challenging to determine wether this particular quality of time resides in one’s sole perception of it, or is related to some “objective reality”. Anyway, I believe music, throught it’s abality of providing a material that needs to be considered within duration (even when going to very short, long, or extatic musical experience), is one of human’s best way to enhace this experience of presence.
Erwan Butter, June 2009.
TOWARD WEST
The album is composed of 5 major instrumental pieces (”Pace of Space“, “Lanscape“, “Hight and Low“, “Shift”, and “Elasticity“), 2 songs (”Toward West“, and “Last Longer“), and 3 sound transitions.
Track 1 : Toward west
Composed, written and played by Erwan Butter, 2009.
Computer, electric guitar and bass.
Voice for reading : Morgane Tschiember
Track 2 : Pace of space
Composed, written and played by Erwan Butter, 2009.
Computer, electric guitar and bass.
Track 3 : Transition + Landscape
Composed, written and played by Erwan Butter, 2009.
Computer, electric guitar and bass.
Track 4 : Transition + Hight and Low
Composed, written and played by Erwan Butter, 2009.
Computer, electric guitar and bass.
Track 5 : Transition + Shift
Composed, written and played by Erwan Butter, 2009.
Computer.
Track 6 : Last longer
Composed, written and played by Erwan Butter, 2009.
Computer, electric guitar and bass.
Voice for reading : Morgane Tschiember
Track 7 : Elasticity
Composed, written and played by Erwan Butter, 2009.