The audio-travelogue is an underexplored tradition in abstract music-making. Montréal sound artists Christian Calon and Chantal Dumas demonstrated its full potential with their classic Radio Roadmovies, the first disc of which features on-the-go vignettes from a scattershot trip through the Canadian countryside, and now this new globetrotter joins them and a few others (Daphne X, Ezio Piermattei) in a modestly sized canon. The uncredited person(s) behind Opera Benezet—likely Zach, who we hear speak around the 19-minute mark—gives the following description of the tape: “The spark bardo passage of the bridge building Saint Benezet by a chance geographical crossover with a Delco man following a Paris power outage. A cross consciousness hallucination between Benezet and a foreign fan club trailing one man’s wheel path across France.” The supernatural aspects aren’t entirely overstated. The collage piece drifts like a dream, its progression more stream-of-thought than a single line across a roadmap. We find ourselves in bustling urban locales and sleepy liminal spaces with no knowledge of how exactly it happened, but it sure does make sense once we’re there. Overheard music from buskers and/or local concerts plays a central role, often clipped into echoing loops that add to the hazy atmosphere. Come to think of it, it’s a more accurate representation of a journey than a straightforward series of recordings could ever be. The traveler often ends up being a passive presence, caught in some other current that could never have been foreseen (in this case, a DIY tour de France). As listeners we too are just along for the ride, slack-jawed and wide-eared at endless mundane majesties.
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Noise Not Music 