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July 22, 2005
There was a lot of talk about dinosaurs and illiteracy
Luc Ferrari - Music Promenade (excerpted from Presque Rien)
Black Dice's 'Miles of Smiles' was one of the most exhilarating and bizarre tracks of 2004, and when I first heard it, I was taken aback by how alien and unlike the band's other work the music was. It just seemed to have no precedent. But, as is often the case, I was grossly mistaken. As Andy Beta pointed out in his review of the EP on P-Fork, Luc Ferrari's "Presque Rien" had mapped the same sort of landscapes, 30 years prior.
"Presque Rien" (trans. 'Almost Nothing') was put together by Ferrari and finally completed in 1970. It's composed of subtly manipulated field recordings that he made in a Yugoslavian village, pasted and taped together into what he intended as a sort of musical photograph. In 'Music Promenade', the most prominent element is the chirping of the cicadas, which is constant throughout the track. And it's this sound that Ferrari uses almost like a florist would use floral foam, as he zooms in on other discrete sonic objects and arranges them particularly, gracefully, over the length of the entire 'Promenade'. The cumulative effect reminds me of that line from Wilco's 'She's a Jar', when Tweedy sings, "And watch me floating inches above/the people underneath"; "Presque Rien" is like a really elaborate and gorgeous piece of eavesdropping (over the range of an entire village no less!).
You can find a bunch of Ferrari's releases right over here, but if you're interested in owning a copy of "Presque Rien" on CD, it's going to be a little bit more difficult (check out the original vinyl available for a mere $280) to obtain. Still, totally worth it.
Posted by Kevin at July 22, 2005 10:02 AM
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