The Illusion of Infinitesimal on Baksaru 027 – 2014
French label Baskaru releases in trios, which is good, I think. You are more likely to get all three if you are already considering buying two. Hard to decide where to start, but I went for France Jobin, whom I know as a very nice person and whose music I haven’t heard in some time. She is from Montreal and worked as a blues keyboardist in the 1980s, and then did nothing for a decade (well, raising her sons, if that is nothing) and then returned to create very silent electronic music. First as I8U but then, later on, under her own name. As said, her music is very silent and that might be because she wants our full concentration. Or, perhaps in a Lopez way, she wants us to have more space in controlling her music. Because it’s very soft, you can decide to turn up the volume and fiddle about with the EQs, adding more high, mid or low frequencies if you please. That’s not what I (like to) do. I play it as is, but even I turned up the volume a bit on this one. You have to, I guess, as some great music unfolds then. France Jobin probably does what loads of people do: process field recordings with computer means and create organic, sustaining fields of sound, with shimmering melodic content, such as in ‘Zero’. Or with even more minimalism in ‘+1’, adding more silence and singled out sharp tones, ending the CD on a loud phrase, the most explosive loudness this CD has. A wake-up call perhaps. If music on labels such as Line is up your alley, or you can’t get enough of all the silent music Lopez brought us in the past, then this should be up your alley also. Very microsound I’d say if anyone were still using this musical phrase.
Frans de Waard