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Lionel Marchetti
& Olivier Capparos - EQUUS
 "The
liner notes to this CD are all in French, a language which I never mastered,
save for ordering a drink and some food. So its hard for me to say what 'Equus'
is about. Its composed by Lionel Marchetti, whom we know for his solo work as
well as his duo work with Jerome Noetinger, who teams up with Olivier Capparos,
of whom I never heard. He is a composer of instrumental and electro-acoustic
work. 'Equus' is a most curious, thirty-three minute work. It deals, perhaps
exclusively, with voice material. Lots of people lend their voices (Sarah Bernhardt,
John Oswald, Pierre Schaeffer, Henri Chopin and many more) and also, I think,
that Ash International LP with flight control talk is used. These voices are
processed into an electro-acoustic work of extraordinary power - if only I could
grasp what it is about. Soft, drone like at times, very loud and noisy towards
the end. A powerful work indeed. A true masterpiece in the field of electro-acoustic
music. Do not play after dark - scary stuff included. (FdW) - Vital
Lionel Marchetti & Olivier Capparos - EQUUS: Most of the folks who have been
reading this magazine for years know that a frequent contributor is POGUS Records...
they also know that the music coming from that label is often "different"
(which is, in great part, why we so cherish what they send). This recording (a
33 minute CD) by Marchetti & Capparos is the epitome of those differences...
sound sculptures in the strongest traditions of musique concrete whose improvised
nature will appeal to listeners across the spectrum - as long as they're not afraid
of something new! Those who do have difficulty with sonics that depart from "normal"
will totally freak when they listen to the 3 rather long compositions here, but
I found the electronics to be totally enchanting! The keyword for this type of
music, of course, is listen... this isn't music to be taken casually... in fact,
it almost demands that you experience it in total solitude; trying to absorb their
sound manipulations without total focus would reduce your awareness of their extreme
talent. There is no "genre" you can pigeonhole this in... it digs deep
into your psyche, massages it with images both disturbing and (at times) volcanic...
I found myself in it's grip from the opener to the last second - especially at
the 10 minute mark of composition II... spacemen gone totally bonkers. The real
beauty of what Lionel & Olivier are doing here is that there is no pretense,
no "cheap trickery" - and the recording is full-spectrum... it will
blow you away! I give this our MOST HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, as well as an "EQ"
(energy quotient) rating of 4.78! - Rotcod Zzaj, Improvijazzation
Nation
Lionel Marchetti's music, not only his collaborative projects with fellow composer
and poet Olivier Capparos, has always been haunted by the past, particularly the
radio – through which a whole generation of musique concrète pioneers
discovered the sound world around them – in the form of what he calls "divers
hasards radiophoniques". Sounds of childhood (a magical time, a voyage of
discovery Marchetti took with his own children Adèle and Hadrien on last
year's album of the same name) – chiming grandfather clocks, the wheeze of
an old accordion, snatches of old chanson and movie soundtracks (here Grace Kelly
and James Stewart from Rear Window – of course Marchetti is familiar with
his mentor Michel Chion's essay on Hitchcock's use of sound in that film) –
combine with Latin incantations, fragments of poetry (notably the rolling r's
of Ezra Pound's Canto XLV) and the distant muffled sound of galloping hooves in
33 minutes of magnificently crafted musique concrète realised by Marchetti
and Capparos in the studios of INA/GRM in Paris in 2001 and 2002. Marchetti has
often compared his pieces to poems, so it's fitting that the disc comes with three
of them by way of liner notes. Eric Vuillard's lines "the gallop of horses
on the earth is like the first thought of man" and "the dreams of men
are the decomposing thoughts of the dead" are curiously appropriate, as is
Capparos's tale of a little girl sitting at a table in a clearing in a forest.
"You're here at last. I was waiting for you. You're looking for the animal
you have lost. I'm trying to create one." Masterly.–DW, Paris
Transatlantic
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