ATLAS (97 phénomènes…) is a concrete music composition by Lionel Marchetti created "for an acousmatic listening session lasting 12 hours" (dubbed the "VERSION INTÉGRALE") and which the artist describes as "7 CIRCLES in the form of a sound labyrinth." It was composed between 1987 and 2016.
“Go beyond forms, certainly… but by passing through forms.” Swami Prajñãnpad
“Do not look for anything before, everything begins, each time, at this place and there, and at that moment it begins to swirl.” Frédéric Neyrat
“I played in this palace of infinite forms and there I saw the one who is without forms.” Rabindranath Tagore
“There is no mystery." Chögyam Trungpa
"Not only enjoy the cosmos, but also stand up to it…" Kenneth White
ATLAS (97 phenomena…):
First Circle: COSMOS (HORIZON OF OBJECTS)
Second Circle: A CALCULABLE CHAOS
Third Circle: THE FOLD OF TIME
Fourth Circle: THE DISGUSTED ANIMAL
Fifth Circle: WAR (OUTGROWTH OF THE CIRCLE)
Sixth Circle: THE SOUND OF THE DESERT
Seventh Circle: SONG OF HEALING
Sendings 1 & 2
Final: OCEAN (OF FERTILITY)…
7 Circles
97 compositions
total duration: 12 hours
A gigantic dragon whose head and tail are invisible, ATLAS (97 phenomena…) is a collection that slowly unfolds following a meandering path through several dozen concrete compositions.
Multiplying the poetics, the invoices, the styles, the eras, the origins (experiments on the art of recorded sound, improvisations reformulated for acousmatic listening, music for radiophonic creation, cinema, installation, theater and other new electroacoustic compositions) the whole is put to sound in a grand final gesture, like a monumental sound labyrinth where the listener is offered to get lost, definitively... or, for the one who will emerge - possibly transformed - to find himself face to face with that which, through the veil of multipicity, will never be able to be named.
In the works for many years, emerging, without my knowledge, from the meticulous search of my analog and digital musical archives in order, little by little, to exhume (to bring out) more than a number - scattered pieces caught in the net of the forge of the great work over almost thirty years: objects, entities, characters, fictions of spaces, rocks, winds, water and fire, breath, voices, colors, tastes, cries, bodies, numerous materials loaded with their poetics and invoices of then and to come, sometimes divergent and left fallow in the boxes of the sound workshop...
...all slowly organized and today proposed in one go, in an immense roll that is not without recalling that of the calligrapher: horizontal deployment intended for the cavalier vision in order to fly over the entirety of a territory.
A number, in the sense, also, of the search for a unity.
Because it is now a question, with the arrangement and composition of these multiple phenomena, of letting emerge, of letting rise a line of force - a vein, with a geomorphological appearance - and precisely, these are eras, structures, materials and impulses variously shaped, sometimes heterogeneous, which have all been challenged to coexist: in the same surge, in a long drift, for a blossoming, "like a tower that would grow from its own substance" (Roberto Juarroz).
Creation of a vast complex, therefore, in the full sense of the word, that is to say offering this possibility, for the listener, that a natural force spawns in these parts, and this, so that he feels it - fully.
Is it a trap?
Is it a net thrown into an ocean of sounds?
What are we going to grasp, discover or understand here, listening?
Will it be possible to come back?
Is it a closed space or an open space?
Isn't there, rather, a path, to which we should, here and there, and according to a measure specific to each, tune our breathing, in order to finally escape and finally find a singular existence?
The challenge for me, with so much material in hand, was therefore to play with the alternation of concrete compositions that were very tight in their writing, mixing poetics that were sometimes distant, with an aphoristic allure, sometimes firmly folded in on themselves and that had to find their breath by confronting (responding) to absolutely other views, stretched, plastic, large, smooth, while juggling through different styles within the concrete musical genre itself: field recordings, sounds of the world, animalities, anecdotal, abstractions, games with the fantastic, captured sound phenomena, small sound theaters, acousmatic fictions (most often) or even documentary-style recordings…
We will evolve, for example, from the sound recording of a space traveler's diary to the acoustic discovery of more or less objectively observed places (a campsite in Japan under Mount Fuji, a nocturnal square in Italy, a torrent in the Alps, a lake in China, a recording of the waves of the Pacific Ocean...) as well as through the raw reality of sound phenomena captured and reworked as such, as close as possible to the materiality of the loudspeaker membrane, in order to obtain, finally, a properly physical synthetic flavor; we will find ourselves abandoned to many fictions both microscopic and macroscopic, on the edge of the abstract and the concrete, jostling and playing, knowingly, with all the scales, the internal spaces specific to loudspeaker writing, the presence or absence of vocal characters and their avatars, all drifting slowly and at length within the deployment, in a compass rose, of multiple paradoxical cartographies, folded, unfolded, folded... as the infinite manipulation of recorded sounds knows how to offer us.
A crossing of waves and poetics, all associated with an idea of musical study.
We will also be accompanied, throughout the work, by an improbable recorded sound couple: two vocoid robot machines (Robinson & Virginia) - the texts, in English, are written by the philosopher Frédéric Neyrat - whose questions, remarks, intimate relationship, points of view will direct our listening and will be the signature of a great journey: from the world of the human, both actor and observer, through the machine (intelligent?) to the Cosmos.
In the same vein, all the compositions, organized into seven Circles, will be highlighted, here and there, by a few original thoughts (recorded and set to sound) by the same philosopher Frédéric Neyrat who - from his eagle's eye view, from his wandering star's path, as an off-screen character - will appear from time to time in the cosmological sky of the work to open us up to its symbolic, metaphorical and metaphysical dimension all at once, unless it is to bring us back, by a fundamentally different path, after twists and turns, to the enigmatic essence of the things that populate the universe.
During the creation of the full version on Acousmonium Motus at the Futura Festival 2017 by Nathanaëlle Raboisson, Olivier Lamarche, Eric Broitmann, Paul Ramage, Guillaume Contré and Lionel Marchetti.
The idea of giving Atlas (97 phenomena) continuously crossed the mind of the composer who worked for some ten years on this demiurgic enterprise, without constraint or limitation of any kind, with, at the heart of the project, the utopia of embracing all the sounds of the world. For Lionel Marchetti, it was a question of bringing together the sum of materials stored in his archives — samples, scraps, scattered sound objects — which he had never used, and of creating an assembly without any a priori concern for form. The idea of the collection (an atlas) and its different chapters (seven “circles” and 97 phenomena) was then born, to which the composer would give titles, imagining, beyond this classification and through a few transitions, a sort of scenario: the journal of a traveler in space (Circles I and II) who returns to earth and apprehends the physical world (forests, deserts, oceans, clouds, rivers, mountains, etc.), even initiating a metaphysical reflection (reading the Book of Job). Three voices, treated in different ways, guide our listening and create a link in this initiatory journey: that of the professor – the philosopher Frédéric Neyrat – and of two robots speaking in English. About ten performers – including the composer – take turns at the projection console to create a space, via the orchestra of loudspeakers (acousmonium Motus), this world work in which we let ourselves be immersed: "a crossing of waves and poetics, all associated with the idea of musical study" the composer rightly specifies.
Composition — pure madness
Open labyrinth but also entanglements, paths upon paths, imbroglio
Ever-increasing complexity of connections, disconnections, sequences and relationships
Appearances, abundances, intensities and inventions (a host of inventions)
Microphonic wanderings and multiplication of motifs: reality is the motif
River, springs, streams, forests, caverns, mountains and coastlines
Curves of the Earth seen from above
Matériologies, reliefs, a whole catalogue of substances, morphologies and waves
But also, why not, and we will have to put an end to this once and for all: human city, electricity, dark psychologies and fictions (dangerous and proliferating multiplication of the little mental theatre)
The exercise of the trap
Sum or collection?
Meditation and action
A voice manifests itself, an incision in the body of sound
Several voices, an archaeology of the voice, unless it is the presence of fire
For each burst, a word and soon, who knows, the arrival of a word
A fire that burns because of the wood, burns only if there is a supply (of fuel), but it dies in that very place, if there is no more supply, because then the condition has changed
The game of the world
The flow
Space, spacings, circulation of forces in the very body of matter and time
The risk of necessary questions
What is a phenomenon: the appearance, the observed arrival of what is there, waiting or the search for a breath, a circulation between emergences now present?
Does silence exist?
The ebb and flow
Stars, starry sky, vertical affirmation, here and there, of the void
Cosmos
How is it possible to combine so many diversely located spaces?
The path up and down is one and the same
Do not lie to yourself
The mountain is still
Abandon all stratagems
The sword
The return to oneself — for a new beginning
The eye and the ear
Atlas —
A labyrinthine suite with a more or less archaic style where the local, at each twist and turn, is reflected in the global amplifying the chaotic evidence of a spiral shape
The helicoid already there since dawn and its first breath.
Musical composition, production, sound design and realization, sound filming, instrumentarium, in the composer's studios: Lionel Marchetti – 1987/2016
Robots: Virginia & Robinson (IUSS - 2006)
Texts of the robots: Frédéric Neyrat and texts by Frédéric Neyrat read by himself
Photography: Lionel Marchetti / 2015
Copyrights / SACEM - 2016
Released digitally through Bandcamp on October 29, 2024.
Acknowledgments / it is possible to come across, throughout the work, some sounds, presences, influences and sometimes modified vocalities of: John von Neumann (C3-2), Walt Whitman (C1-5), Robinson Jeffers (C6-14), Jérôme Nœtinger (C2-4), Yôko Higashi / Hamayôko (C1-5; C3-6; C6-1; C6-6; C6-12), Jean Cocteaux (C1-8), P. P. Pasolini (C5-13), Dominique Répécaud (C1-7; C4-5), Bruno Roche, Alex Dressler (C2-5), Pierre Mottron (C2-5; C4-9; C4-10; C6-5), Michel Chion (C7-3, 4 & 5), Pierre Schaeffer (C3-6), Seijiro Murayama (C3-9; C3-14; C7-1), Bruno Fleurence & 60 étage (C1-7; C3-6; C6-6), Renaud Golo (C5-1), The Residents, David Chiesa & leUNensemble (C3-10), Giuseppe Ungaretti (C5-13), Denis Boyer (C1-10), Olivier Capparos (C2-5; C5-5; C5-8), Tino Rossi (C3-6), William Pellier (C3-6), "Lama très grand lama" (C7-10), Gary Snyder (C2-12), Mooji (C5-7), Charles Olson (C7-4 & 5), "a dead man" (C3-4), Pierre Jacob (C1-8; C3-8), Odile Cortinovis (C5-8), Pierre-Jean Giloux (C5-2), John Cage (C1-9), William Carlos William, Roger de la Frayssenet, Sébastien Églème (C2-9), Emmanuel Hölterbach (C2-12; C6-14), Adèle Marchetti, Kyô Marchetti-Higashi (C1-7; Envoi 2), Dominique Lechec (C6-14)… &… (A+B)° = N unknowns…
John von Neumann (1903-1957): Hungarian and American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, and engineer.
Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962): American poet known for his work about the central California coast. "Influential and highly regarded in some circles, despite or because of his philosophy of "inhumanism", Jeffers believed that transcending conflict required human concerns to be de-emphasized in favor of the boundless whole. This led him to oppose U.S. participation in World War II, a stance that was controversial after the U.S. entered the war."
Dominique Répécaud (1955-2016): French guitarist "known as much for his participation to free-rock groups Soixante Étages and Étage 34 as for his involvement in the influential avant-garde music festival Musique Action in Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy (France). His career consists of short episodes of public activity interspersed with long periods of listening, writing (in Revue & Corrigée, although under a nom de plume), and running the independent label 33revpermi. If his guitar playing (loud, raucous, free-form but definitely rooted in rock like Thurston Moore) has inspired a few followers, he has a bigger impact as an advocate of creative music." #
Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888-1970): Italian poet, journalist, essayist, critic, and academic.
Soldati
It's like being
in the autumn
on the trees
the leaves
Mooji (1954): Jamaican-born, UK- and Portugal-based spiritual teacher of Advaita
Michel Chion (1947): French film theorist and composer. Research assistant to Pierre Schaeffer in 1970, member of GRM from 1971-1976. Known for his book on the relations between sound and image L'audio-vision, 1990.
Seijiro Murayama (1957): Japanese-born, Paris-based composer, improviser, and percussionist.
Emmanuel Hölterbach: French composer and sound artist. Lectures about sound art and the art of listening. Organized Eliane Radigue’s archives, wrote her biography (published by INA/GRM), and co-ordinates the publication of her archives with Alga Marghen and Important Records. Co-founding member of record label Les Productions Fluorescentes.
Bruno Fleurence & Soixante/60 Étages: French "free" accordionist and the "rock band" he founded in 1981, originally as a duo with Dominique Répécaud and later expanding and including Jérôme Nœtinger and Lionel Marchetti, among others.
Denis Boyer: Head of the Department of Complex Systems in the school of Physics at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
William Pellier (1965): French writer and playwright
David Chiesa & le UN ensemble (2012): French composer, improviser, and contrabassist, founder of the ensemble which plays what he prefers to call "musique d'aujourd'hui" ("today's music" as opposed to "contemporary music"). Around 60 participants have participated in total, though ususally it's around two dozen players.
Pierre Jacob: French philosopher working with the mind and cognitive sciences.
Odile Cortinovis: French academic at the school of information science and communication at the Sorbonne.
Pierre-Jean Giloux: French artist and filmmaker.
Sébastien Églème (1978): French composer and improviser.
Dominique Lechec: Pianist
Olivier Capparos: composer, writer, artist, and poet. As a member of The Dreaming Jewels Circle (Stefan Zauberer, Cyrus Lamb, Elizabeth Tessa Bayer, etc.), he questions the fabrication of the body, the depth of sound, and mental figuration.
Yôko Higashi (Marchetti) (1974): Japanese performer, vocalist, choreographer, and dancer. Wife of Lionel Marchetti. Other acknowledged family members: Adèle Marchetti, Kyô Marchetti-Higashi. Also relevant: Roger de la Frayssenet is a pseudonym of Lionel Marchetti himself.
Bruno Roche: French musician who has collaborated with Marchetti on numerous occasions.
Constantin "Tino" Rossi (1907-1983): French singer and actor.
Alex Dressler: Department Chair and Professor of Classics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Research Interests: Republican, Imperial, and Late Antique Latin Literature, Gender and Sexuality, Early Christianity, Ancient and Modern Aesthetic Theory, Hellenistic Philosophy.
Pierre Mottron (1987): French singer and songwriter.
Renaud Golo (1963): French violinist, boxer, artist, and poet.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892): American poet.
Jérôme Nœtinger (1966): French improviser and composer of electroacoustic music.
Jean Cocteaux (1889-1963): French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, film director, visual artist, and critic. Important to the development of surrealism, dada, and the avant-garde in general.
Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975): Italian poet, film director, writer, actor, and playwright. "Considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history, influential both as an artist and a political figure."
Charles Olson (1910-1970): American poet
Dalai Lama ("Lama très grand lama")
Gary Snyder (1930): American poet, essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist.
Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995): French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist, acoustician, and founder of GRMC.
The Residents (1971): American art-rock band.
John Cage (1912-1992): 🐐
William Carlos William (1883-1963): American poet and physician.