RECORD
Jean Luc Godard
For very Long I was close to blind to the very idea of “recording”. What do you record, how do you do that, what that is? I could have better said “deaf to”, but its not even the case, it was just dichotomy rather. Like often you have the information in pieces, the whole work is to see how they link, to recognize them at first, and hopefully to articulate them your own way some day. I Know its often said that everyone goes to movies, and its only a very few needs to see how they're made, and this is applying to music and records. But each sound on every single album you usually credit to the artist, unless you're following one particular artist and can detect that there are various moments having (or making) various sounds.
I didn't thought of all this for long. I took literally what I heard. Say if I listened to Johnny Guitar Watson, I thought all he does is what he does, and would I be in front in a same room that's what I would hear. I think my ear started to send different, eventually conctradictory informations to my brain, when I went to cinema. I clearly remember going to see Jaws and E.T. From Spielberg, and being affected by the sound in itself. Not the music or the tone of voices in dialogues but as a whole second film inside the film. It pretty soon after would confirm with Jean-Luc Godard movies, and since applied for me to every sound in films, from Hollywood to Eric Rhomer, every sounds speaks and sings his own voice.
It opened my eyes back to all the records I was listening to. How came Blue Note records or Impulse sounds that way? Where is this room, is this sound realistic at all (Heavy Coltrane Stereo Pans on Impulse for example)? I started to realize that a sound doesn't exist, its a term we use in oppositon to a noise. But you can have noises in music, and musical sounds in life. So that I soon discovered the line between both : a sound is a projection, an affect an intention – a noise is something making a sound.
A Sound is a projection de facto otherwise it would remain a noise = a projection is necessarily Someone sending something to someone else. I'm sure Audio (arts?) people would object me plenty of sub-views on, but I leave it aside for now for couple reasons one being that is mostly an non-instrumental area (and i'm mostly if not only, an instrumentist concerned and involved), in my experience a lot of Audio people turned to be actually inconsciously frustrated handicaped instrumentists that didn't find how to (its also why most of diverted usage of instruments are for me very limited, and why its mostly a pretty limited usage is made of it too).
Anyway, if a sound is a projection, why would you go to such a sterile place as Studios to record yourself? I Remember when I use to listen to a lot of Derek Bailey Solos recorded in his house or in various domestic places, and I loved this whole-sound, and tried naively to get this sound by going to a studio and asking to put mics everyhwere in the room to be mixed later etc... until I realised you could made that sound by using a simple single input source machine.
Sounds are Politics and Economics, it affects them massively. A Sound is a man in a given time and context. You need a sound coherency and without even really being aware of it, your situation will produce it. All the examples above are major influences in terms of sound thinking (I hate those terms, mostly because they've been totally raped and bended by supposed to be sound theories). A Sound is what you hear where you are.
Anyway, if a sound is a projection, why would you go to such a sterile place as Studios to record yourself? I Remember when I use to listen to a lot of Derek Bailey Solos recorded in his house or in various domestic places, and I loved this whole-sound, and tried naively to get this sound by going to a studio and asking to put mics everyhwere in the room to be mixed later etc... until I realised you could made that sound by using a simple single input source machine.
Sounds are Politics and Economics, it affects them massively. A Sound is a man in a given time and context. You need a sound coherency and without even really being aware of it, your situation will produce it. All the examples above are major influences in terms of sound thinking (I hate those terms, mostly because they've been totally raped and bended by supposed to be sound theories). A Sound is what you hear where you are.
To be certainly continued ....
Noël Akchoté. French guitarist, violinist and producer, born December 7, 1968, in Paris, active in various experimental fields between drone, rock, jazz and contemporary classical music. Also music journalist and author as well as founder (together with Quentin Rollet) of the French avantgarde label Rectangle. Currently running the label Noël Akchoté Downloads. He is the brother of electronic musician SebastiAn.
