AU COEUR DU LITIGE

François Houle
Spool SPF 302

The artistic work of François Houle advances so quickly that each new release is a surprise package with no overt references to previous works. After acknowledging his debt to clarinettist John Carter with In the Vernacular (Songlines), Houle has now published a singular electroacoustic creation, Au Coeur du Litige (At the Heart of the Matter).

The double CD contains two stories, first that of the January 1998 Québec Ice Storms which buckled hydro-electric towers under the massive tonnage of encasing ice, crippled the maple-sugar industry by uprooting whole trees, and isolated heat-, energy- and food-deprived villages for two weeks. The second story is of Houle’s personal experience being half a continent away, his source of information the perceptions of electronic media which left him emotionally involved but powerless to do anything other than attempt to phone his family in Châteauguay armed with more information than they themselves had.

Houle weaves his stories using poetry, recordings of the storm and of radio transmissions, his own clarinet, and the work of his electroacoustic quartet. The methodology of assembling this broad range of material is reminiscent of the founder of electronic jazz collage, Miles Davis, who would record hours of concert improvisations and reduce the results into a performance derived from reality. Expanding on this visionary approach, Houle reconfigures natural clarinet sounds with extended techniques, conflates the musical content with elint from other arts, and renders the whole like news from another world into an epic of contemporary mythology.

"Air Froid" (Cold Air) is a clarinet concertino announcing a portentous change of atmosphere. The diabatic emotional suggestions are achieved by two clarinets simultaneously blowing long tones in the lower mid-range in the left channel. Through the right channel is juxtaposed the sound of one clarinet using the techniques of circular breathing and multiphonics, or the creation of synchronous well-differentiated tones.

The micro-crystalline structure of steel hydroelectric towers reaches fracture point in the quartet piece "Cryogenic Nightmare." The refrain of distorted radio calls for "Generators" signalises the fragility of contemporary life when power grids collapse and night stars can be seen above a frigid land deprived of artificial light. On "Ice" Catriona Strang calls the tempest "all splendour-spit and crickle-bit" and then her voice is progressively reverberated and distorted. With the framework of a natural disaster in mind the listener can hear both the shrieking of the storm, and then in contrast, a lovely balladry of respite ("En Attendant la Neige").

It is rare for a natural or political event with profound social consequence to be effectively transformed into a work of musical art, but Houle’s music succeeds with a profound clarity. The bilingual booklet accompanying the CDs contains concise academic, political, and musical analysis to contextualize the music. But the test of such story-based music is whether it can be listened to outside of the thematic context in which it is created. My opinion is that no matter how you listen to it or analyze it, Au Coeur du Litige is a sensory experience confirming Houle as a composer and instrumentalist setting the highest of standards for the international contemporary creative musical scene.