Narration: Kali Malone
Music: Kassel Jaeger
Additional Hidden « Uminari Voice »: Eiko Ishibashi
Audio Essay commissioned by V/A - Pro Helvetia

François J. Bonnet - Skyquakes

Fragments IV: Collected Waves from Surrogate Memories

Ada's Chant (From Fragments IV)

Sedimental is honored to release the newest work, ARITHW, from Paris based based electronic musician and sound artist Kassel Jaeger (François Bonnet), realized during a week long artist residency at Epsilon Spires in Brattleboro, Vermont in June of 2023. In addition to creating and performing ARITHW he also performed Eliane Radigue’s L'île resonante, bookending the week.

ARITHW (A Rift in the Horizon's Wall)  was developed during an artist residency at the Epsilon Spires art center based in Brattelboro, VT, USA. During this residency, François J. Bonnet appropriated the space to create original music. Using their 1906 Estey 3-Manual Organ Pipe as his primary source, Bonnet then set about exploring secondary instrumental sources, such as the in house grand piano, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the acoustics of the three-tiered sanctuary of the former historic church (built 1889) that is now Epsilon Spires. ARITHW unfolds like an interstice, a gap between two frames on a flat surface generated by the organ, a surface that shatters to reveal an unclear, ghostly, and elusive space. In this work, Bonnet focuses on more instrumental material, only to subvert it and dilute it further before melting it into an uncertain acoustic space that evokes reminiscences of Erik Satie, Walter Marchetti or even Eliane Radigue, as well as his own previous music and the liminal electroacoustic climates that have been his trademark for many years. A profound work of subtle complexity and suspended tension.

ARITHW (A Rift in the Horizon's Wall) also refers to the vernacular literary mythology of New England, a land, at the same time, still attached to Europe and torn from it. A place that carries the ancient myths and mysteries of the Old-World while being teleported to a totally different land, where a new 'sense of nature' seems to have emerged, a sense never entirely free of ancient, reminiscent nightmares

Kassel Jaeger - ARITHW Excerpt

Digital only. Only on https://kasseljaeger.bandcamp.com/

Fragments (collected Sounds From Deserted Places) - Silvaplana

From Pale Calling, Black Truffle 20, 2016

Calling [Glimpse] (With Oren Ambarchi and James Rushford)

Face [Glimpse] (with Oren Ambarchi & James Rushford)

Digital only, only here : https://kasseljaeger.bandcamp.com/

Fragments II (Collected Refrains From Lost Thoughts) — Edelweiss

Deltas [edit]

Fernweh

Parallel (edit) with Giuseppe Ielasi

From Fragments III — Collected Resonances from Radiophonic Æther now availble only on bandcamp.

Fragments III — Collected Resonances from Radiophonic Æther

D'une couleur oubliée

Black Truffle is pleased to present Meith, a new composition in two parts from prolific composer/theorist François Bonnet. Usually operating under his Kassel Jaeger moniker, Bonnet is a major figure in contemporary electronics and electro-acoustic music, collaborating with artists such as Lucy Railton, Jim O’Rourke, and Stephen O’Malley, and releasing his work on labels including Editions Mego, Senufo, and Shelter Press. Always meticulously detailed yet immediately affecting, Bonnet’s work situates itself at a very personal intersection between the traditions of academic electronic and electroacoustic music, and a more shadowy, underground group of approaches to experimental sound: kosmische Musik, the tape murk of the 1980s underground, the haunted ambience of Christoph Heemann & Co.

Meith immediately welcomes us into its densely layered sound world of electronic tones, positive organ, and unidentifiable field-recorded textures. Almost static yet constantly in flux, it deliberately opens itself up to repeated and varied listening: from a distance, its many voices cohere into a monolithic plane of sound, while closer inspection reveals myriad details and momentary events. Like a drop of ink spreading through water, harmonic material present in one voice gradually fans out into the whole arrangement, creating fleeting moments of unity amid the constantly shifting waves of tone and texture.

Far from the austerity of some contemporary electro-acoustic music, Meith affects the listener as overwhelming organic; its individual layers are unstable and at times near-chaotic, imbued with life. Though it can appear almost formless, the piece undergoes major shifts throughout its duration, from the austere dissonance of the opening moments to the surging harmonies that appear midway through the second side before the piece gradually dissolves into a spectral glimmer.
Francis Plagne.

Kassel Jaeger - Meith (Excerpt)

Rituel de la Mort du Soleil (excerpt)

Matière Mémoire presents the MMXX Series.
In anticipation of the year 2020, Matière Mémoire asked 20 great artists to create an original 20 minutes piece and an artwork.

Kassel Jaeger

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