‘I was always interested in sound(s), even as a child. I loved the sound of refrigerators, air conditioners. I could often be found listening to machines, putting my ears right up to them. A strange child perhaps… The logical progression of that interest was electronic music and then experimental music in high school.’ (Richard Chartier)
Sound and installation artist and main Line-man, Richard Chartier, has for a decade and a half, from a unique place at the hub of a contemporary electronics and sound design scene, without being a scenester, pursued a post-digital minimalist inquiry at the interface between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, perception and the act of listening. Subsequent Materials (2006 – 2012), third in a series of Chartier compilations, following Other Materials (2002) and Further Materials (2008), assembles works from 2006-2012, compiling seventeen pieces of varying degrees of separation and duration.
While the allure of the physical, as evidenced in the ubiquity of the hark-back to the enduring appeal of the vinyl album, is notable, its limitations are here highlighted by post-digital native Chartier’s use of every last bit of space afforded by the cd format to pack in no less than three hours of (out-of-print) compilation tracks, soundtracks for visual pieces, unreleased works, and compositions previously only available as bonus tracks. Over the course of its hundred-and-eighty-minute expanse come collaborative encounters with, among others, AGF, Taylor Deupree, Evelina Domnitch + Dmitry Gelfand, and a rework of Autistici. From the fleeting 00:34 of “intro_outro themes for Smithsonian,” through the more generous 15:00 of “recurrence (stereo reference mix for Akousma at EMPAC,” to the positively plumped up 34:32 of “recurrence (transparency.studio),” the collection provides a forum for exhibit of the extent of his reductionist approach to electronic sound.
Subsequent Materials is available on Line.
