THE AETHERNAUTS (2014)
Sountrack for a short animated film by Frederico Penteado
1. THE AETHERNAUTS (10:56)
DUST MODEL FOR AN IMPERCEPTIBLE TIME (2015)
2. ALLUVIUM (19:38)
3. MOON TINGE (16:14)
TOTAL TIME: 46:48
CATALOGUE #: atrito-afeito 005
ARTIST: KAROLINE LEBLANC Alesis & Moog Synthesizers
TITLE: THE AETHERNAUTS / DUST MODEL FOR AN IMPERCEPTIBLE TIME
FORMAT: CD-R
CARDBOARD COVER
STAMPED DISC
LIMITED EDITION OF 100
RECORDED IN MONTREAL IN 2014 AND 2015
COVER DRAWING BY FREDERICO PENTEADO
THE AETHERNAUTS PHOTOGRAPH BY ARMELLE BURKE
RELEASE DATE: MAY, 2015
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The Sound Projector (UK)
January 1st, 2016 by Ed Pinsent
Karoline Leblanc – The Aethernauts/Dust Model For An Imperceptible Time
MOON OVER MONTREAL
Karoline Leblanc is a musician from Montreal who we first heard as one of the core members of Total Improvisation Troop, and their ensemble work Man Of War earned a tip from Ian Sherred’s hipster beret, who enjoyed the “clangorous, vaguely sinister” vibe. Now here she is with a solo album of synthesiser music created on her Alesis and Moog devices (the former being an item of choice when you want to imitate analogue sounds and behaviours). Both pieces The Aethernauts / Dust Model For An Imperceptible Time could be characterised by their long-form approach, and their overall purity – what we hear is tentative sketching of details on an uncertain abstract canvas, as if fearful of ruining the simplicity of primed white hessian.
Those who enjoy analogue electronics or reasonable simulacrum thereof will enjoy her slow and drifty music, even if there aren’t any especially innovative sounds on offer from her settings, nor does she favour the soggy maximalist mudscapes of Pauline Oliveros. What I do like is the absence of pre-programmed, pre-digested ideas; it does genuinely appear to be music made and performed in real time, and Leblanc is never content to let the machines do half the work for her. On the contrary, it’s more plausible to think that she’s tamed and domesticated them to the extent that they perform like two trained housecats, obediently showing respect and love to their mistress.
The animated film by illustrator and film-maker Frederico Penteado for which The Aethernauts was composed as a soundtrack can be seen on Vimeo or through his own website. But seeing this film can make Leblanc’s music too “narrative” or interpretive, when it’s better enjoyed on its own non-associative terms. More successful for me is Dust Model For An Imperceptible Time, composed in 2015, which is in two parts titled ‘Alluvium’ and ‘Moon Tinge’; through her titles alone, Leblanc evokes vast distances of time and space, and indicates she’s more interested in exploring soil deposits than attempting to account for human civilisation.
I say this to convey something of the epic scale of her work, and the inhuman emptiness of it; it really does appear to have been composed and realised from a very lofty viewpoint, from which we can observe cosmic events unfolding even when we don’t understand what they mean of have any scientific equipment to interpret what we’re seeing. In short – Tangerine Dream’s early works, squared, and compressed to their most basic components.
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Kathodik (Italy)
October 8 2015 by Marco Carcasi
Karoline Leblanc – The Aethernauts/Dust Model For An Imperceptible Time
Tre lunghe composizioni dal Canada, penzolanti fra rintocchi drone music e ricerca elettroacustica.
L’iniziale The Aethernauts, soundtrack per il corto di animazione omonimo del portoghese Frederico Penteado (visionabile su fpenteado.co.uk), a maggior tasso sfrigolante.
Dust Model For An Imperceptible Time suddivisa in due movimenti (Alluvium e Moon Tinge), ad emetter cupe rifrazioni cosmiche, misteriche ma non ostili.
Paesaggi gorgoglianti apparentemente immobili ed ectoplasmi di vibrazioni aliene.
Tutto molto classico, tutto molto ben fatto.
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Revue & Corrigée (France)
20 Décembre 2015 par Cyrille Lanoë
Karoline Leblanc – The Aethernauts/Dust Model For An Imperceptible Time
Anne-F Jacques – Sable ou Sel
Nouvel essai solo pour KAROLINE LEBLANC avec deux pièces électroniques dont une bande son pour le court métrage “The Aethernauts” réalisé par Frederico Penteado. Aprés Németh et le film “Koi”, voici donc à nouveau sur cette page de la musique pour image. Avant de parler de l’image en question, attardons nous sur le sonore. Un peu comme chez Németh, il nous est donné d’entendre plusieurs pistes en une, avec un va-et-vient électroacoustique mêlant du field-recordings à de la composition linéaire, horizontale, en bourdonnement. Un exercice plutôt inhabituel comparé au reste du catalogue. Une électroacoustique aussi futuriste que les images. Ces images animées en court métrage traitent partiellement de science fiction, d’art plastique, d’un regard interrogatif voire méfiant (ça c’est pour le masque à gaz du personnage principal par exemple) sur le monde urbain et industriel environnant. Une bande son qui a très bien su s’inspirer du film, avec une pointe d’abstraction non négligeable. La deuxième pièce du disque ne se regarde pas. Même si elle reprend ce travail minimaliste, pour l’emmener vers des résonances de sine-wave dans un effet de drone qui fonctionne plutôt bien. Cette pièce en deux parties affirme le travail presque plastique de KAROLINE LEBLANC. L’abstraction toujours en avant, jusque dans le titre “(…) Imperceptible time””, pour une vision bien personnelle des musiques électroacoustiques et acousmatiques, réalisées sur synthétiseur Alesis et Moog. Toujours sur Atrito Afeito, avec un autre CDR usiné tiré à 100 exemplaires, celui d’ANNE F. JACQUES. Un album court avec deux piéces anonymes ou presque, surement “sable” et sel”, d’une dizaine de minutes chacune. Deux pièces sur la vibration, le souffle et la spatialisation. Une électroacoustique mécanique et dynamique à la fois. Cette vibration nait parfois de frottements amplifiés pour se fondre dans des ambiances froides. Nous semblons plongés dans des manipulations d’un dispositif aux sonorités saturées, un mécanisme parfois perturbé dans son fonctionnement par des interventions humaines. Mais c’est assez flou tout ça, n’est-ce pas ? Surement ce qui me plait dans ce disque, une ambiguïté entre composition synthétique et manipulations en temps réel. Ou pas…En tout cas on ne sait pas trop et c’est surement ce qui est bien.
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Decoder Magazine (USA)
October 13 2015 by Bryon Hayes
Anne-F Jacques – Sable ou Sel
Karoline Leblanc – The Aethernauts/Dust Model For An Imperceptible Time
Montreal-based label Atrito-Afeito really put their musical microcosm into focus with the release of the Total Improvisation Troop CD-R, and now Paulo J Ferreira Lopes, Karoline Leblanc and their cluster of like-minded adventurers of thorny tonal territories are back. This time, it’s a pair of CD-Rs that are acting as sacramental offerings to those translucent, electrically charged spirits that ring our collective imaginations. Leblanc herself puts forward a pair of synthesizer pieces for her solo recorded debut. The first, “The Aethernauts,” is the soundtrack to an eponymous film created by Frederico Penteado. It’s a wonderfully oblique work that accompanies the dark visual atmosphere perfectly. “Dust Model for an Imperceptible Time” via is a two-part suite that slowly unfolds over thirty-five minutes, with uncanny synthesizer textures that beam into and out of focus. Coming in at just over twenty minutes, Sable ou Sel — the second CD-R — is a brief taste of Anne-F Jacques’ rotating amplified objects. Sandpaper-like timbres are wrangled from an unknown host of most likely commonplace items, cast by Jacques into a captivating spell that seems to shift in density as it fills whatever space it encounters.
Both of these discs are still available from the label, so hit up both the Discogs page for Leblanc’s synthesizer maelstroms and Jacques’ prickly tectonic activities to score a copy of each.
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