Yesterday I wrote about a CD that was recorded at a concert in france that I attended. Today I have been listening to a CD by a duo that I oddly enough saw perform on the same evening. Eric Cordier and Denis Tricot are a very interesting and highly original pair of artists. Cordier is a musician and field recordist I like a lot, and whose work I have written about here before. Tricot is an artist, perhaps best described as a cross between a sculptor and performance artist. Together, the pair have, on many occasions now built what they describe as Orgues de Bois, or Wooden Organs. These constructions are made from long, flexible planks of wood that are often suspended from wires or gathered together into seemingly gravity defying structures. These sculptures are then miked up and can be “played” by Cordier, and sometimes the audience. I’ve added some photos here rather than try and describe how these creations look in any more detail. On the night I saw them play live I thought, (and to be honest, relying on my memory, I still think) that Tricot built and then performed with these wooden structures while Cordier played back some kind of soundtrack. The notes to this new album named Orgue de Bois released on the Prele label suggest that at all of their shows the sounds we hear come entirely from the sculptures, with no processing or overdubbing. If this is the case I would need to go back and completely re-evaulate what I heard on that evening.

Listening to this CD tonight I may well have misinterpreted the music on that evening. I remember little beyond the general feel of the sound at the concert, but its quite possible that what I am listening to this evening sounds very similar. The five pieces here are full of groans and creaks and scrapes and deep twanging sounds as the huge wood and string sculptures are stretched, plucked and scraped. In many ways what we are hearing here is just a couple of musicians playing a slightly bigger than normal stringed instrument, but then there is also something quite alien about these sounds.  Although what we hear is really quite musical, if I didn’t know otherwise I would probably have sat straining my ears without success to try and pin down what instrument I was listening to. It is hard to tell how many people are in any way manipulating the sculptures at any one time to create the sounds we hear, and even harder to work out which sounds are the direct result of the structure being directly addressed, and which are just the sound of such a large series of wooden planks suspended in the air naturally making sounds. There are other elements in there as well. Halfway through the second track an airplane passes over the outdoors space in which the wooden organ has been erected, and for a moment it sounds strange, something recognisable amongst the alien sounds around it. Elsewhere the sounds suggest they could actually be other things entirely. A section near the end of that same second track sounds like a snorting large pig scurrying around looking for food buried close to the microphone for instance. Not being able to recognise the source of these acoustic sounds our brains try and place them, apply them to more familiar or just seemingly recognisable sounds.

Musically I’m not sure what to make of this CD. My curiosity about the release stems almost entirely from the way it has been created, and I find myself listening more to try and and work out how each sound might be made rather than to try and assess whether I like what I hear as a piece of music. I find it easier to consider the music as a kind of field recording of the effects of strain placed on this kind of suspended object, a bit like if someone recorded a wavering bridge on a windy day. In fact though, the sculptures are indeed directly played by Cordier and Tricot, and so what we hear is a musical narrative recorded on a particularly difficult instrument. From this perspective, taking the sound merely as abstract sound and judging it on its musical merits, Orgue de Bois is just OK. there are some nice little moments when hissy scraping and bass thud string twanging create some interesting shapes together, and the five tracks here do have a structure to them, a beginning, middle and end that make them easier to consider as musical pieces, but ultimately I find this album far more rewarding as one part of a piece of an audio/visual presentation that naturally leans towards its more dramatic visual side. The project as a whole is very interesting, and highly original, and attending a performance makes for a rewarding experience. Listening to the sound alone, divorced from the context it was created within misses out on much of the point though. I certainly hope I can witness Cordier and Tricot perform live again, when I hope to be less caught up in the spectacle and able to listen to the musical side better.