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Release date: June 25, 2021

It might be easy to assume that the distinctly focused compositional voice unveiled on Rose Bolton's The Lost Clock is the product of its creator's rigorous, almost hermetic dedication to her own particular aesthetic universe. A quick survey of Bolton's artistic career, however, reveals that her carefully sculpted approach to abstract electronica has been forged through a longstanding engagement with a wide range of intertwining creative activities.

This album—coming out on Important Records' cassette imprint, Cassauna demonstrates both the Toronto-based composer's unique mastery of colour and her gift for breathing a tactile, organic quality into synthetic landscapes. Bolton's distinctive sensibility is akin to that of a painter—every hue has been carefully mixed so as to imbue its accompanying gesture with its own life and personality. This tangible dimensionality her electronic work assumes, however, can be traced back to the work Bolton has been doing since the 1990's. She has produced a large and varied catalogue of work that includes pieces for solo performers, chamber ensembles, orchestra, electronics, voice, and to accompany installations and films. A number of her works reside in several of these zones simultaneously, such as Song of Extinction, an ambitious collaboration between herself, filmmaker Marc de Guerre, poet Don McKay, and multiple live ensembles, that was mounted in an abandoned power station for Toronto's Luminato Festival.

This quasi-instrumental vitality isn't the only feature of The Lost Clock that reflects Bolton's diverse artistic practice. It can also be heard within the structural realm. Each of the collection's four tracks trace a patient unfolding and favour a certain roundness of timbre, even as finer details begin to fidget along the perimeter of the music. As with her writing for the concert hall, Bolton doesn't shy away from the evocative here, yet she doesn't pursue this poignancy through conventional, direct or quasi-narrative means. Her compositions lead the listener gradually through their impressionistic sonic scenery, but neither the path they take nor their ultimate destination are at all predictable. The ostensible gentleness each piece exudes dissolves as dissonances slowly insinuate themselves, obscure textures writhe just out of earshot, percussive lattice work materializes, or as the overall blend begins to exert a heavier weight. Her lucid-dream vision of form functions in tandem with her acute micro-level attentiveness to engender a vivid and elusive soundworld that resists classification.

Over more than two decades Rose Bolton has been garnering acclaim and enthusiasm from audiences and major collaborators alike. Last year, her brooding string quartet The Coming Of Sobs was nominated for Classical Composition of the Year at the JUNO Awards, following earlier accolades such as SOCAN Awards for Young Composers, and the Canadian Music Centre's Norman Burgess Fund. Her music has been commissioned by the likes of the CBC, stalwart experimental music festival the Sound Symposium, as well as key interpreters and ensembles such as percussionist David Schotzko, accordionist Joseph Petric the Esprit Orchestra, Continuum, Arraymusic, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, and guitar quartet Instruments of Happiness (led by Tim Brady).

The Lost Clock

Rose Bolton - Unsettled Souls - from The Lost Clock - Pre-Order Now

21/28_A few kilometers from Hpa-An, in the YATHAYPYAN cave, at the end of a long dark tunnel which is crossed barefoot, opens a gaping hole on a natural paradise ... Except that… Here, as often Burma (as everywhere ...) mobile phones act as teens' musical companions whoses haunted caves like very noisy ghosts! Ship in their warm and cozy company ...

// À quelques kilomètres de Hpa-An, dans la grotte de YATHAYPYAN, au bout d'un long boyau sombre que l'on traverse pieds-nus, s'ouvre une béance minérale sur un paradis naturel… Sauf que… Ici, comme souvent en Birmanie (comme partout…) les téléphones portables jouent le rôle de compagnons musicaux aux ados en guinguettes qui, libérés de leurs devoirs scolaires, par ce jour de fête national, hantent les grottes comme des fantômes très… sonores ! Embarquons en leur chaleureuse compagnie…

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Allvaret

(Dis)Orient

sinewaves + LFOs played on an akai MPC 1000

230108 (dodecalogue 007)

As I Went Out One Morning

Exosphere

An excerpt from the collaborative album - Marc Baron / Mark Vernon - post-chance (Erstwhile 097) 

https://erstwhilerecords.bandcamp.com/album/post-chance

Recorded by Marc Baron and Mark Vernon between June 2022 and October 2023 
Mastered by Taku Unami 
Produced by Jon Abbey

Marc Baron & Mark Vernon - post-chance (excerpt) (Erstwhile Records, 2024)

Wander Steps for two microtonals accordions played by the duo XAMP Fanny Vicens and Jean-Etienne Sotty (festival Messiaen au Pays de la Meije, commission 2018)

Wander Steps (2018)for two microtonals accordions

Alina Kalancea - Salt

It's not over

On the border between listening to the soundscape and "in situ" compositions, in the porosity proposed by a work who rubs the real,his artistic, ecological and spiritual paths approching each day a little closer to the silence.

/////
The originality of the company "Espaces Sonores" is based on a radical approach to sound and musical composition developed in close collaboration with the sites where we work.
The sound is always the driving force behind our work, which then opens up to other artistic disciplines. The latter then blends with the sound, music and text, to offer new vistas, new perspectives.
Proposing sound based site specific shows where the notions of spaces crossed, paths travelled, and text entwined, are the fields explored played with, developed & inhabited.

~~~~~~~~~~

L’originalité de la compagnie Espaces Sonores repose sur une approche radicale
de la composition élaborée en lien étroit et au contact des espaces où seront
entendues les oeuvres.
Le son est le premier moteur de propositions artistiques qui s’ouvrent au partage à
d’autres disciplines. Celles-ci viennent alors à la rencontre de l'écriture sonore et
musicale pour lui offrir de nouvelles échappées, de nouvelles perspectives.
Nous proposons des créations contextuelles où les espaces traversés sont les
champs d’investigations de pratiques artistiques transversales.

Stéphane MARIN:
Acteur du développement de l’art sonore en espaces libres (Espaces Sonores - Lieux Publics - Décor Sonore), ​​​compositeur de musiques électroacoustiques multiphoniques pour le spectacle vivant en espace public (2ème Groupe d'Intervention, Osmosis Cie) Stéphane Marin s’investit depuis plus de 10 ans dans ces aventures artistiques qui prennent la ville comme lieu de résonance, comme matériau vivant pour la composition de nouvelles formes musicales et sonores.

Il crée en 2008 ESPACES SONORES, dont le travail repose sur une approche radicale de la composition élaborée en lien étroit avec les espaces où sera entendue l'oeuvre. Il y conçoit des créations sonores contextuelles pour sites spécifiques.

C'est à la frontière entre l'écoute du paysage sonore in situ et la composition, dans la porosité que propose l'oeuvre qui se frotte au réel, que s'engage son travail.​​​
Sa trajectoire artistique, écologique et spirituelle le rapproche chaque jour un peu plus près du silence.





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Espaces Sonores

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