One cannot help remark something very interesting about Dhomont’s recorded oeuvre, and that is that it is full of pieces appearing as parts of other pieces. Novars, the first piece of Les dérives du signe, appears here as the third piece of Cycle du son. The third volet, I should say. Chiaroscuro, the second piece [...]

Jalons is that rare disc in Dhomont’s output that is not a cycle or part of one. It is simply, as the title (of the disc only) indicates, a collection of pieces spanning a portion of Dhomont’s career, the portion from 1985 to 2001. It is, as Dhomont says, a “mini-panorama.” And though the span [...]

The title Mouvances-Métaphores covers two discs of music: Cycle de l’errance and Les Dérives du signe, seven pieces from the eighties all related by ideas of movement and change. (The word Métaphores is as literal, and as metaphorical, in French as it is in English. And both meanings are important for these pieces.)
The first piece [...]

Like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, Dhomont’s symphony is made up of bits and pieces. Like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, Dhomont’s symphony has a life of its own.

Unlike the monster, however, Dhomont’s symphony is graceful and lovely, all of its bits were used with the victims’ permission, and the surgery performed has left the pieces of which [...]

The album …et autres utopies, which was released for Dhomont’s 80th birthday, contains all recent work—either new pieces or older ones reworked. Four of the five pieces on this disc—all but Voyage-miroir—were performed at the Akousma(3) festival on the day itself, 2 November 2006.
Here and There, which opened the concert, also opens this disc. “Here [...]

Sous le regard d’un soleil soir is an electroacoustic melodrama, the first of Cycle des Profondeurs, which, along with Forêt profonde and the soon to be completed La cri du Choucas, takes its text from psychiatric writings, in this case the famous Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing. The ideas that have inspired each piece of this [...]

Forêt profonde continues the multiple and shifting meanings of Sous le regard d’un soleil soir, here using fairy tales and the writings on fairy tales of Bruno Bettleheim and even, in a one place, some text about Bettleheim and his incarceration in a prison camp. Profonde means deep physically—as in the place in the forest [...]

Tod Dockstader was a cult figure back in the seventies. At least in my house he was. This was back when KPFK still ran an electronic music show every Saturday night, and everyone who listened to that show was snapping up Owl records like mice. Well, it’s no news any more that Dockstader is [...]

Yes, you can still spell common words backwards and get strange and lovely effects ybereht. Or perhaps I mean htiwereht. Either way, this is one of those strange under the radar discs that appear and disappear without a ripple. This hasn’t quite disappeared, luckily. If you don’t live near L.A., and cannot make it [...]

This disc was my introduction to all four of these people. Needless to say, I soon had all the discs of all of them I could find. And I haunt the stores, looking for the next new one. With the first two, that used to be easy. It’s more difficult now, but you can [...]