Jean Schwarz / René Aubry / Serge Aubry – Still Waters: Ballet De Carolyn Carlson

Label: Celia Records – CL8607
Format: Vinyl, LP
Country: France
Released: 1986
Genre: Electronic
Style: Experimental

Cherished French electro-acoustic works composed for contemporary ballet - a collaboration between Celia Records founder / INA-GRM alumni Jean Schwarz, classical musicians René Aubry and Serge Aubry together with choreographer Carolyn Carlson.  It does not get any better.

Our interest is always piqued where the worlds of theatre / dance / mime / ballet combine with experimental music.  Vito Ricci, Meredith Monk, Colman, Roger Doyle, Peter Zummo - the list goes on.  Schwarz’s background in producing some of the most mind-melting musique concrète works on French institution INA-GRM or his own Celia label, in combination with his ethnographic research arms him with a vast arsenal of unusual sonorities and timbres to deploy.  Some electro-acoustic works don’t immediately hit or can feel like purely a stuffy sonic demonstration of what’s possible, whereas Still Waters benefits from the context of the Carlson’s ballet.  Fluttering artificial birdcalls chirp in 4D, blurring the boundaries of the natural and artificial and plunging us deep down into the psychedelic realm, bubbling back up into subtly portentous classical composition that hints at trouble round the corner.  We hate to say it, but there’s a softly ‘cinematic’ quality threaded in that elevates this work from the pompous academic world into something undeniably human (and that goes well with psychedelics.  If you’re not weeping when the lilting acoustic guitar of ‘Five Women’ comes in, there’s something wrong.  Expensive record but genuinely once in a lifetime stuff.  (NM - top archive copy).

Tracklist
A1 Jean Schwarz– Earthquake 3:20
A2 Jean Schwarz– Leap 6:24
A3 Jean Schwarz– Conflict 3:55
A4 Jean Schwarz– Keeping Still 7:00
A5 Jean Schwarz– Whales 2:58
A6 Jean Schwarz– Merry Go Round 1:44
B1 René Aubry– Funeral March 5:00
B2 Serge Aubry– Solo 3:33
B3 René Aubry– Quartet 3:44
B4 René Aubry– Sunlight 4:20
B5 René Aubry & Jean Schwarz– Five Women 6:14
B6 Jean Schwarz– Thunder 3:20