Eric La Casa:::: W2 [1998-2008] Herbal 1005-2

"We think that we « make a journey » but soon enough it's the journey that makes – and unmakes - us." (Nicolas Bouvier, "l'usage du monde")

When I listen today to these pieces, I hear, of course, a geographic inventory of all the places I encountered. Above all, though, and as if by default, I hear the sonic journal of twelve years spent recording sound.

My relation to the sites wasn't based on a desire to « document » but it is worth noting, however, that a « sound story », more trivial perhaps, has instituted itself, expanding and commenting on my musical journey: that of a man listening.

Moreover, it has never seemed more obvious to me that listening is always situated in what I would qualify as the extreme present, that is, the instant when listening, landscape and time become one.

Bouvier was right : the more we journey, the more the journey transforms us. Fascinated by water and by wind, these agents of transformation, activators of change, became, during those twelve years, my principal, almost exclusive, subjects, wherever I happened to be. Progressively, a methodology, informed by cartography, gave my way of working a certain determinism without, however, breaking my intuitive relationship with the landscape. This also informed my conception of that which is sonic (le sonore), and its importance: being inside, at the very heart of movement. Listening, without drawing breath, led me beyond my preconceptions – and into the depths also, along with all my recording gear: I remember very well my fall into the cold water of a waterfall's plunge pool. That was in 1991...

Listening to water or to wind is to bring one's attention to bear on the perpetual motion of things, a living alchemy, the pulsing of the world.

Eric La Casa, Summer 2010

WATER
1. Les pierres du seuil part 4
2. Les pierres du seuil part 5
An exploration of the wide variety of water territories (from droplets in a cave to powerful ocean waves), in two movements, forming a single composition.
3. Les pierres du seuil part 2
At the emergence of a body of water and air, an effervescence
4. S'ombre part 1
The alchemy of water and stone, summer
5. Spirale 3
The geophony of a river : a meandering journey, marked out by windmills
6. Les oscillations part 2
Waves, oscillations .... an opening up of the landscape
7. L'Inspir du rivage part 2
Ressac... when the sea and the rocks come together
Total running time : 74 minutes

WIND
1. Dans le feuillage du lointain, la clameur d'un bruissement
At the boundary with background noise, an ineffable tumult
2. Les pierres du seuil part 6
Listening to the wind's journey through the landscape
3. Quelque chose de cela, le désert part 1-2
A distressed wind in a still life landscape
4. Les pierres du seuil part 8
A factory entrance, air expelled by machines
5. L'air au fond rouge
The density of air, a city's distant rumbling
6. Les aubes sont navrantes
A false northern landscape, cold and hostile... a drama
Total running time : 75 minutes

Credits
Water
1. (1999)
2. (1999) from "Les Pierres du seuil 4-7" CD . Edition… (USA). September 2000
3. (1998)
4. (1999) excerpts from "The stone of the threshold" CD. Groundfault Recordings (USA). November 1999
5. (2003) Unreleased. Commissioned by The River House [?] at Saint-Georges-de-Montaigu (France)
6. (2004) excerpt from "Les Oscillations part 1&2" CD. Fringes Recordings (Italia). May 2005
7. (1999) from Explorer series, 7". Production : Povertech (USA). September 1999

Wind
1. (1998) from "The sound of nature - the nature of sound" compilation. Kaon (France), July 2001
2. (2000) from "Les Pierres du seuil 4-7" CD . Edition… (USA). September 2000
3. (2000) from "Quelque chose de cela, le désert part 1-3". Collection Mémoires (France), May 1999
4. (2001) Unreleased. Originally composed for Halana magazine (USA)
5. (2001) from "Sul" compilation, a tribute to Chris Marker. Sirr.records (Portugal), June 2002
6. (2008) excerpt. Unreleased. Originally composed for Clédat & Petitpierre's performance

Locations [1994 - 2007]
France
Water
Ardèche (steps in the Pissevieille brook / rain on a car / summer rain)
Athee-sur-cher (river Cher in full spate)
Bedoues (river Tarn)
Berry (oozing in a watertank)
Bruxelles, Belgium (machine for rinsing out photographs)
Choisy-le-roy (artificial rain in an industrial zone)
Crotelles (Rain, under an umbrella / brook and brook pipe)
Darnetal (rain on container)
Dieppe (music school organ)
Dunkerque (swelling sea with lighthouse / dunes / sand in wind)
Dunkerque-Sollac (air-cooler / ore in motion)
Epeigné-sous-bois (outflows in trenches and reverberating pipes / water, air bubbles, at the edge of a field)
Grenoble (wall dripping in the 102 venue , during a soundcheck for Cellule Metamkine)
Haute-Savoie (Nant Bruyant brook / violent rain on a car)
Hennequeville ("tubular sea" / heavyflood-tide on a concrete platform)
Le Semnoz (rain falling on a small covered market)
Lozere (Gorges of the river Tarn)
Nouvellière (in a farm, rain after a storm,)
Paris (hail on window / rain and storm in inner courtyard / oozing in a tunnel / outflow in inner pipe / the Ircam anechoic chamber : hand sliding on skin and microphone in mouth ) Paris (in a cemetery, rain, under an umbrella)
Plaisians (foot in dried herbs)
Pordic (distant helicopter / wind in a cornfield )
Port Jehan (waves and peebles)
Vendée (the "Grande Maine" and "Petite Maine" rivers)

Wind
Céré-la-ronde (in a wood)
Choisy-Le-Roi (airplane flying overhead, water cleaning station : electrical waves, water-pump engines / ventilations)
Dieppe (music school : organ)
Dunkerque-Sollac (ore in motion / foundries / hot rolling mills / blast furnaces)
Epeigné-sous-bois (in an oak forest)
Hennequeville (North Sea)
Lussault-sur-loire (fir forest / grinder in the distance / a windy day in a forsaken house / a stormy )
Montlouis (a stormy night / train in the distance)
near Neuil (a forsaken farm)
Paris (Salpetriere chapel and Notre-Dame-des-champs church : organs played by Jean-Luc Guionnet / portable DAT recorder motor / Strasbourg-St-Denis metro station : electrical waves / seeds in motion)
Villeneuve-Saint-Georges (empty goods trains)

and three locations in Europe :
Water
Rovinj, Croatia (lightning / rain and storm in an inner courtyard / rain on an open window frame / along the sea shore)

Wind
Rovinj, Croatia (inner courtyard and wind under door / thirty-story tower, radio waves / strong wind in marina)
Anvers, Belgium (a pedestrian tunnel and elevator)
Dundee, Scotland (in the harbour)

2 x Audio CD
140 minutes+
Release date: November 2010
18 Euros + shipping order

Related resources:
Also by Eric La Casa
Eric La Casa / Cédric Peyronnet: La Creuse
Eric La Casa / Cédric Peyronnet: Zones Portuaires

Musically connected
murmer :::: frame work 1 - 4
Lasse-Marc Riek :::: Harbour

Geographically connected
Battus / Marchetti / Petit: La Vie Dans Les Bois
Eric Cordier / Seijiro Murayama: Nuit
Pascal Battus: Simbol / L'Unique Trait D' Pinceau
Jean Luc-Guionnet / Pascal Battus: Toc Sine
Jean-Luc Guionnet: Non Organic Bias
Eric Cordier: Osorezan