Your cart (0 item)

LA CASA, ERIC - Paris Quotidien (2nd ed.)

Format: CD & BOOK Label & Cat.Number: Swarming 006 Release Year: 2022 Note: very different from the typical 'touristic' Paris sounds, ERIC LA CASA has catched environmental phenomena from his window and the building / apartment where he lives, the aural micro- & macro worlds of an inhabitant....- "The 3 long tracks progress as an intimate and fascinating dive into a narrative recollection of the daily sounds that collectively form the audio signature of one's habitation.." [Mech Labs] - 2nd deluxe ed - 60 page full colour booklet, photos & texts, 74.min, lim. 150 Price (incl. 19% VAT): €15.00 Warning: Currently we do not have this album in stock! More Info To provide a measure of my ordinary sound environment -- its properties (its singularities, or on the contrary, its banalities, its obvious features) -- while investigating my status as inhabitant. A measure that is neither too close nor too far from that which happens: an investigation into the threshold. Only sounds recorded into my appartment Recordings : January 2013 – March 2015 mixing : January - November 2016 vimeo.com/206045567 Inhabiting : A story of an ordinary environment In contrast to a virtual address (email…) what is the significance of living here at this address, in this building, said to relate to my existence, to my life, in this time of listening? Living in Paris When we raise questions about sound in or of Paris the archives generally provide a series of motifs that depict typologies of wholly stereotypical events: the metro, the bells of Notre Dame, la Place de L’Étoile, waiters in the café, etc… Like many Parisians my daily environment is the object of no representation found in these sound librairies. My premise therefore involves an exit from these emblematic constructions, from these commonplaces that participate in the major historical accounts of Paris. Starting with only my immediate environment, one which possesses weak symbolic value, my project is to explore its sounds from my apartment’s windows. It represents a kind of temporary and deeply localized inventory that, when given a narrative form, solidifies the impression of my listening, which is the listening of an inhabitant. reviews Après s’être posé la question de l’écoute domestique en compagnie de Jean-Luc Guionnet (Home: Handover), Éric La Casa interroge les bruits de son propre quotidien. Replaçant ses micros à son domicile – XIXe arrondissement de Paris –, il capte des bruits qu’on ne soupçonne pas puisqu’ils ne sont généralement pas, de Paris, ceux qui « intéressent » (cloches de Notre-Dame, métro, garçons de café…, écrit-il). Paris Quotidien est, en conséquence, d’un concret saisi, et parfois saisissant. Le ballet qu’on y trouve – « récit qui structure mon arrière-monde et fabrique mon échelle domestique », écrit-il encore – va au son de la rumeur du trafic routier, d’oiseaux ou de véhicules de passage, de travaux en cours, de bourdons d’appareils électriques… En trois temps principaux (Les saisons du bruit de fond, Les événements extérieurs, Le monde intérieur), La Casa arrange des sons qu’il semble, dans le même temps qu’il les met en boîte, apprendre à reconnaître. Dans ce lieu qu’il n’arpente pas en promeneur – ce que l’auditeur sera, par contre, d’un genre qui papillonne pour ne pas être toujours intéressé par ses découvertes –, il met au jour et un espace que lui, Éric La Casa, habite et les sons qui l’habitent, lui, Éric La Casa. C’est ainsi, en tout cas, que celui-ci procède pour – comme l’écrivit Henri Lefebvre cité par Jason Kahn dans l’introduction à son ouvrage In Place – « arriver par l’expérience au concret ». [guillaume belhomme, le son du Grisli n°2, éditions lenkalente] Here we have a release of France's finest when it comes to field recording, mister Eric La Casa, who this time keep things close to home, the city he lives in, being Paris. A beautiful city no doubt, yet this is not about the Arc de Triomphe or the Eiffel Tower, but rather about the direct environment of La Casa, his apartment in the 19th arrondissement, which is not near the centre, so no familiar tourist audio snap shots there. There are three lengthy pieces here; in the first one La Casa follows the sounds of the seasons (winter, spring, summer and autumn), while in the second it is about the surrounding of his apartment (the street, the garden, the alarm) and the final, longest, one is about being inside, listening to non electrical devices, electro magnetic fields, and the central cooling system and so on. The release comes with an extensive (CD-sized) booklet of pictures in which we see the microphones set up and taping the environment. La Casa writes there are no effects, just editing and that he choose to record sounds in quite a simple way, i.e. no complex sounds that one normally doesn't hear. It is stuff you could do as well, but if you would arrive at an equally interesting release is to be seen. Much of the power of this music goes towards the use of editing, placing sounds in certain places, maybe doing a bit overlap between them, and thus create a dialogue between them, and that is something that La Casa is pretty good at. Some of the sounds are recorded from afar, and gives you the notion of an open space, especially in the first piece that is the case, which is twenty-three minute rumble of hiss that at one point is brutally disturbed by thunder. Here the editing is quite 'slow', if you get my drift, unlike in the other two pieces that show more editing, going from event to event, sometimes with an abrupt cut in the middle. There is also more 'noise' in here, especially in 'Les Evenements Exterieurs', where we are witness to some machinery noise in the garden. This is all totally fascinating music, I think, and best enjoyed with the windows closed so you can fully concentrate on somebody else’s environment. Maybe it will make you perceive your immediate surrounding, inside the house as well as outside, in a new way, hopefully. (FdW), Vital weekly 1082, www.vitalweekly.net/1082.html https://swarming.bandcamp.com/album/paris-quotidien