diatribes + Phonotopy
"Partielle d'averse"

with:
Phonotopy (tennis cythar, electric racket)
d'incise (laptop, objects)
Cyril Bondi (drums, percussions)

recorded on January 23th 2010 at studio diapason, 1210 SJTN / Bruxelles
mastering at Angström, 1030 Sck / BXL
drawing by Sandra Plantiveau
available on INSUBORDINATIONS netlabel
[insubcdr10], 2010
Edited as 100 mini-cdrs in hand-made digisleeve.
it can be ordered on Insub's shop.









***


From the same band:





Press:

"The CD is credited to Diatribes and Phonotopy, which is three people. Diatribes are a Swiss laptop and objects/percussion duo that I have written about before and saw play live last week, Phonotopy is apparently a musician named Yann Leguay, who on this release is credited as playing tennis cythar and electric racket Hmm... Partielle d'Averse, as the disc is titled, is actually a nice little set of crunchy, textural improvisation though, busy and active but not in an old-school improv manner, electroacoustic in feel but with a fair amount of metal and other percussive sound involved. It all feels quite similar to AMM in some ways, a mix of texture and expressive drama but with the three musicians all nicely in tune with one another. Its an engaging affair, quite feisty in its own way, sounds colliding as often as they slip into one another, the musical conversation getting a little heated here and there. For the twenty-three minutes the music keeps you interested, constantly reworking itself and shifting into new patterns, full of energy and never becoming reliant on any sustained sounds as a bed, existing instead as a stream of continual improvised arguments resolved in real time. The spirit and drive of improvisation is at the heart of this music. There is no technical showboating or reliance on either technique or stylish texture, just a recorded moment of shared immediate musical expression.
For some this CD might seem a waste of time. As regularly we complain about how much is released, about how quality standards seem to be falling as CDs and downloads get easier to produce, this little disc, full of improvised music by musicians not that widely known outside of their own smaller circles is the kind of thing that is likely to get missed, passed over, held up as an example of how many CDs exist today. I find myself asking what else these musicians are meant to do though? In today's increasingly crowded, but also increasingly fickle experimental CD market there is little that lesser-known musicians can do than try and select the best work they are capable of and present it in as pleasing and accessible manner they can in the hope that their work might become more well known. Diatribes and Phonotopy do just that here by producing a very nice package, that can also be downloaded for free, that contains some very acceptable, often thoroughly pleasing music. Yes there is a lot of music out there, and no, nobody can ever take even half of it in properly, but I personally see the appearance of musicians like the guys in Diatribes, and their subsequent energies and efforts to share their music with a wider audience to be a good sign for our music, evidence that the music can get out there with a reliance on bigger name labels, that the spirit of improvisation is alive and well in more ways than one. So if you have the time, go here and download or buy the music, and if you don't, well then that's fine."
Richard Pinnell/thewatchfulear
"As environmentally diffused as the sounds may become, Bondi is often knitting at pulse, creating polyrhythms and a momentum that animates the whole, keeping it moving while d'incise pulls sounds from the ether or the street. The spontaneous character of the music is insistently maintained by working constantly with other players, as if Diatribes is only complete when it's Bondi, d'incise and someone else, as if Diatribes is a principle that always includes the other. The duo has recently released three works, each with a third musician; as different as the guests are, Diatribes manages to create a distinct identity."
[...]
Just over 23-minutes long, it's a beautifully sustained single piece, Leguay's transformed sports equipment a perfect complement to Bondi and d'incise. The work is the kind of transforming soundscape that one associates with AMM, a gradual loss and development of identity through audition.
Invisibility, anonymity, pseudonymity are clearly important here, for this is music shaped by the acuity of consciousness and the porous frontier of identity, whether of the sound, the instrument or the maker. Watching this music being made might diminish its sonic appeal; living only in the ear, it elaborates on mysteries of identity which are matters of both cognition and psychology. It's fitting that some of their works themselves inhabit an area both grey and plural, as limited edition works of art or downloads."
Stuart Broomer
"the latest in a series of interesting team-ups from the Swiss duo of Cyril Bondi and D'Incise. Yann Leguay (Phonotopy) plays a "tennis cythar" and the "electric racket", hopefully home-made instruments which seem to be two halves of an oblique whole occupying undefined turf midway between a sports gear shop and the heavy metal arena. Some 23 minutes of very busy activity, dominated by rather shapeless and scrapey doodling. Stay with it though, as this grumbly pattero-language from a microscopic dimension eventually starts to make sense in a broken, halting way."
the sound projector
"They did it again, the duo Diatribes (d'incise and Cyril Bondi) from switzerland created a anarchistic free-jazz piece of music with Phonotopy. No melodic moments, just sounds, rhythm, atmosphere and especially a lot of abstraction, as far as I can say, that is one of the marks of Diatribes. Phonotopy is a project of Yann Leguay from France who experiments a lot of with sound, space and self-built instruments and has the same free mind as the musicians of Diatribes. The piece starts slow, but as soon as possible the musicians starts to communicate and act as maniacs and produce sounds without interruption and they differ the speed and intensity of sounds. The combination between a traditional drumset, objects, laptop selfbuilt-instruments, like an electric racket and a tennis sitar is well-chosen. The piece ends in a quiet and meditative mood, but gets disturbed by high feed -backtones and other noisy sounds. Partielle d'Averse is an explosion of short sounds, incalculable and as free as possible. The music is released as a free download under Creative Common license and released as a cdr in a beautiful self=created hard-board cover with a nice painting of Sandra Plantiveau. Great music for free-minded people."
JKH/vitalweekly