Laurent Perrier - Plateforme #2

As promised two years ago, Laurent Perrier delivers the second instalment in his Plateforme series, and Plateforme #2 makes it clear that the French audio wizard did NOT put all the best material from this project on the first disc. In an audio production world where possibilities have become endless, Perrier designed for himself a very restrictive framework: he asked artists for raw audio materials that are representative of their usual soundworld, and decided to produce one piece of sound art per artist using that material - and only that material, no matter what and how much of it he would receive. He calls it a "one-way collaboration." The results are a testament to Perrier's creativity and sense of balance. Each piece irradiates it's namesake's musical personality while maintaining a pace, facture, and intent that are all Perrier's. In that regard, this volume displays a stronger sense of cohesion than #1. "Francisco Lo´pez" is probably the most immediately identifiable piece of the whole project, thanks to the Spanish composer's unmistakable field recordings. That was to be expected; what was not is how "Tom Recchion" and "Christian Zane´si" seem to build on the foundations laid down in that first piece - same kind of sharp back-and-forth cutting between sounds, same type of non-linear narrative - despite the fact that raw materials are obviously more varied. The results are incredibly absorbing and warrant multiple listens. Laurent Perrier ranks among the most respected members of the French electronic music scene. His name is associated to the aliases Zonk't, Pylo^ne, Heal, Cape Fear, and LP, with the Odd Size label, an adventure that lasted a decade, and the urban tribal industrial rock band Nox. His music art ranges from minimal techno to musique concre`te, by way of several other states, with incursions in video installation and contemporary art, plus collaborations with choreographers and playwrights. Plateforme #2 is being released on CD by French independent label Baskaru. Baskaru publishes only a few carefully selected releases each year. It's acclaimed growing catalogue (including recent releases by Celer, Emmanuel Mieville, Yui Onodera, Rothkamm, Sawako, Simon Whetham, and Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek) paints a fascinating portrait of current electronic music, electroacoustic music, and sound art.