Over the years I reviewed some of the work by Gilles Aubry, mainly in collaboration with others, such as with Nicolas Field (in the duo The Same Girl), as a member of Monno, or in more ad hoc groups of improvisation, very rarely, so it seems, a solo work by the man himself. He is from Switzerland and lives in Berlin. Aubry calls himself a sound artist and researcher, using voices, field recordings, music and sound archives. On this new album, (so, perhaps the first one I hear from him that is solo) it is ‘based on sound check situations recorded in Morocco between 2013 and 2014’, and he explores Berber-Amazigh instruments and adding field recordings from the same locations, in order to built two sides of sound collages. This is some fascinating stuff, I must say. This is not your usual layering of some water/rain/sea/forest sounds, but a rather intense trip in which Aubry manages to create a delicate balance between field recordings, which seems mostly voices from local people (but also animal sounds), along with instruments, assumed to be play by Aubry (wind and percussion mainly) along with some heavy electronic altering of all the sounds. That adds a whole sort of ‘electronic blanket’ on top of whatever else is happening. It also makes this perhaps a bit more alien than your usual field-recording album. At least that’s what it did for me.
It makes up for some truly odd layers in this music; sometimes it seems as if the sounds don’t fit, with animal sounds, looped rattles and feedback/overtone textures, but at the same time it works wonderfully well; while not moving at a fast speed, it is not easy to keep up thinking what you hear, processing the experience. Rather than thinking about it, I would think that the best thing is dive deep into this and simply enjoy the experience. This is headspace music and while it may sometimes a randomly stapled collection of sounds, one will no doubt ‘get’ the music one way or another, when played a couple of times. For me it certainly worked that way. (FdW)
Review of “And Who Sees The Mystery” in Vital Weekly (NL)
Over the years I reviewed some of the work by Gilles Aubry, mainly in collaboration with others,
such as with Nicolas Field (in the duo The Same Girl), as a member of Monno, or in more ad hoc
groups of improvisation, very rarely, so it seems, a solo work by the man himself. He is from
Switzerland and lives in Berlin. Aubry calls himself a sound artist and researcher, using voices, field
recordings, music and sound archives. On this new album, (so, perhaps the first one I hear from
him that is solo) it is ‘based on sound check situations recorded in Morocco between 2013 and
2014’, and he explores Berber-Amazigh instruments and adding field recordings from the same
locations, in order to built two sides of sound collages. This is some fascinating stuff, I must say.
This is not your usual layering of some water/rain/sea/forest sounds, but a rather intense trip in
which Aubry manages to create a delicate balance between field recordings, which seems mostly
voices from local people (but also animal sounds), along with instruments, assumed to be play by
Aubry (wind and percussion mainly) along with some heavy electronic altering of all the sounds.
That adds a whole sort of ‘electronic blanket’ on top of whatever else is happening. It also makes
this perhaps a bit more alien than your usual field-recording album. At least that’s what it did for
me.
It makes up for some truly odd layers in this music; sometimes it seems as if the sounds don’t
fit, with animal sounds, looped rattles and feedback/overtone textures, but at the same time it
works wonderfully well; while not moving at a fast speed, it is not easy to keep up thinking what
you hear, processing the experience. Rather than thinking about it, I would think that the best thing
is dive deep into this and simply enjoy the experience. This is headspace music and while it may
sometimes a randomly stapled collection of sounds, one will no doubt ‘get’ the music one way or
another, when played a couple of times. For me it certainly worked that way. (FdW)