Clozier’s La Discordatura, his contribution to the IMEB Opus 30 series, is made up largely of voices, but voices so altered that the sounds one hears in this piece are never more than vaguely recognizable as having started out in human throats. An almost chorale with the almost voices opens the piece, warm sounds mostly, made to sound even warmer by occasional outbursts of cold sounds, metallic sounds that have also been made pretty clearly from voices.

Though there is some back and forth in this piece, the basic movement is from rich, dense textures to very sparse ones, with sometimes only a single simple sound or two over silence.

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Lovely though it is, this one piece is not worth buying the three CD volume one of IMEB Opus 30 for it alone. There are, however fourteen other pieces on these three discs, by fourteen other composers, including Fernand Vandenbogaerde, Barry Truax, and Sten Hanson—so much fine music, you’ll doubtless want volume two as well, which has sixteen composers, including Françoise Barrière, Yves Daoust, Eduard Artemiev, and Patrick Kork. In time, there will be reviews on Asymmetry of all of these, but you won’t want to wait for those before getting these six CDs for yourself.

Clozier’s two contributions to Les Saisons are both été, but two very different summers to be sure. 22 Aout starts out with placid engine-like drones under vaguely carnival-like music, interrupted by a loud blast of high frequency electronics leading to some very energetic music. Electric bells, drones, buzzes, grindings, thuds, scraps of radio noises, and bits from LPs, very scratchy bits.

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The other summer piece, Ont été (excercice d’ écoute), opens with a terrifically low frequency drone, to which is added some resonant crowd sounds (as if in a large museum or palace hall). Some loud, harsh, metallic sounds (heavy machinery), some light, bright, metallic sounds (light machinery), and then riding over all, Clarisse Clozier’s voice, answered by a rooster crowing and some other bird sounds along with the opening drone and the crowd sounds very soft under her voice.

Silence.

And a quick crescendo of crowd sounds, now distinctly from a political rally, leading to Clarisse’s voice again, with all sorts of stuff now going on under her voice. And so on to the end, with surprise appearances by a harpsichord, an out-of-tune piano, and an in-tune piano. Musically speaking, two very enjoyable summers.

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