Review Summary: An industrial wonderland.
Musique concrète is often a mixed bag. There are composers able to take everyday noises - or synthesized ones, but rarely harmonious - and create elaborate, rewarding compositions full of character and begging for analysis. The flip side is every schmuck with a recording device thinks he can record himself scratching his nuts and pass it off as ‘field recording’. However, there are plenty of composers with a sense of vision, and a unique perception of sound. It’s difficult to convince newcomers to the genre to give it a chance for this very reason - that is, your perception of sound will be the determining factor for whether or not musique concrète is worth your time to listen to. There are no hooks, no lyrics, rarely any rhythm, and it makes no effort to lead you. Where a lot of ambient music has the tendency to engulf the listener, musique concrète is rarely, if ever, like this. At the risk of sounding like a pompous dickhead, I will say that it requires a great deal of perspective to appreciate this style of music.
Transmissions is a surprisingly provoking piece of music courtesy of French composer Mathias Delplanque, and is based on the sounds of industrial machinery.
Now, this isn’t just some guy recording a beverage dispenser, so bear with me. The compositions are truly extraordinary, and perhaps the location of their recording makes them that much more interesting. Delplanque is certainly resourceful. “Part 1” and “Part 2” were recorded at the ‘Musee du Textile of Cholet’ which is a building dedicated to preserving machines that are considered important in the textile industry’s heritage. I don’t wish to bore you to tears, so I’ll elaborate no further on that. The sheer fact that Delplanque is able to take the sounds of machines and create a wholly worthwhile piece of music is commendable in itself - of course, this statement could come across as patronizing, and is not intended as such. Whether or not resourcefulness is a determining factor in an album’s quality is not the focal point here.
Transmissons is, if nothing else, a celebration of sounds. It is curious in nature. Listening to it, I imagine myself being 5 years old and visiting ‘dad’s work’ for the first time, seeing everything as a wonderland of untapped potential that the grown ups were too passionless to appreciate. Indeed, Mathias Delplanque has taken machines that were otherwise taken for granted, save the occasional visitor to the museum, and breathed new life into them in an unconventional fashion.
“Part 3” and “Part 4” were recorded elsewhere at a school in Nantes, France. While the locations of recording might seem unnecessary to note, it is essential to the atmospheric quality of these recordings. I daresay it would be impossible to conceive these pieces without some environmental influence. While a lot of similar compositions feel very contrived, there is something spontaneous in
Transmissions despite its painstaking, multiple-year recording process. “Part 4” is a mammoth of a track, and at 40 minutes it could have easily been a standalone recording. It is incredibly diverse, and boasts an array of sounds you might have otherwise never heard in a musical format. The tone is ambiguous, which plays on the general theme of musique concrète. Much of the appeal with this music is on your own perception, and there really is no right or wrong way to interpret this. There is no underlying message you need to
get. As such, if I were to promise any sort of spiritual enlightenment resulting from hearing this, I would only be lying.
Transmissions simply doesn’t promise anything, but that’s not something to devalue it for. It is, for what it’s worth, a collection of sounds made into a beautiful industrialized landscape, begging for exploration. Alas, there is no ultimate goal, no endgame - nothing to
get - but perhaps that’s the best part. Sometimes it doesn't hurt to stop and smell the flowers.
