PAUL DOLDEN

what's to recommend? My interest is piqued

someone gave me a big box of CDs and there were two Paul Dolden CDs on the Empreintes Digitales label, L'ivresse de la vitesse 1 and volume 2. still processing. so amazing. but i'm kinda waiting till the store is empty so that i can play it at a proper volume. i don't want to freak people out. well, it would depend on the people. the people in here now seem rather placid.

L'ivresse 1 is just staggering. one of the most impressive recordings i've heard in ages. completely inspirational. i can't even describe how great it is. haven't even gotten to the second volume yet! 1 and 2 are remastered and slightly reworked versions of old pieces. in the notes he says that one 16 minute piece could consist of over 80 hours of recording. he splices and dices live music and creates mass choirs out of voice samples. THIS is modern classical. all the power and glory of symphonic masterworks of the past made new with tech and imagination.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dolden

Veils is the best! On the 2nd CD, iirc

Also the one instrumental against blocks of taped/agfiwefiwe sound is something I've cooled on, but as a first impact guy he's good.

Oh wow, I didn't know Dolden was known outside Canada. I need to listen again. I had to give a presentation on him in undergrad, ha.

Sundar he is known enough in the UK, or as much as a selected band of electroacoustic composers will be known. He has been talked about over the years on ilx.

Anyone heard The Threshold of Deafening Silence? Need to check that

Hi from a road trip through colorado where I actually brought Intoxication By Speed to play on rt 70

that 2 cd set is definitely my favorite Dolden album, for Speed and for Veils. He packs so much sound into those two that I often find a little goes a long way, but yeah Speed in particular is a major work

The Threshhold CD is early works and it's great too, I like it better than the remastered versions he put out on a different album a few years ago

more later but yeah I love Dolden

Also Dolden is a huge metal and classic rock fan, innit? This is where those sensibilities cross, which is where some of the best classical is found.

i read that his latest stuff incorporates dance music "beats"? that can scare me when i read stuff like that.

"but as a first impact guy he's good."

yeah!

it uses beats but not exactly 'dance music' beats. even the big ending of "L'ivresse de la vitesse" has bits in 4/4.

since "L'ivresse de la vitesse" his one major new CD is "Délires De Plaisirs" in 2005. Only listened to it once, and my impression was that it went a little closer in the direction of overt jazz / rock fusion w/ normal guitars and violins, and away from the hyper-orchestra sound of "L'ivresse", although the basic sound is still kind of completely impossible

for people who are still just reading the thread, Dolden's early pieces involve individually recording each instrument in the orchestra and then overdubbing / processing / multiplying / pitch-shifting each part until it sounds like you have an orchestra with somewhere between one thousand and one million performers. so it still sounds acoustically plausible, not exactly electronic music, except for the fact that it's an orchestra that can go from 2 people whispering to several thousand people flooring it and still sounding together and composed instead of simply sounding like noise. and it helps that his basic sensibility is often closer to rock music than typical 20th century composition and that he's not afraid of 4/4. the last four minutes of "L'ivresse de la vitesse" are something most people don't forget once they've heard it.

i think he says that beyond the walls of jericho has 400 tracks on it? something like that. i don't know how you decide to stop!

or decide that its finished. maybe its never finished. he could always add to it.

New record this week

http://www.starkland.com/st220/index.htm

Anyone here heard it?

No but I'm excited!

stoked!

got it. sonically crazy as always. his last record 'Délires De Plaisirs' (the one with that ridiculous cover showing him riding a motorcycle through the air while playing a violin with a mountainscape in the background) had this increasingly wacky sense of humor to it that I wasn't always sure worked for me -- all those hyper-accelerated time-compressed 128th note guitar solos still sounded too much like real 70's fusion guitar solos at heart. on that record, the humor almost took away from the intensity & impossibility of the sonics -- this one adds narration at times with someone framing all the instruments & sounds being in competition with each other, which pretty much takes it all the rest of the way into a comedy record where your mileage may vary (it'll probably make the record more approachable for as many people who prefer the music to stay on the abstract side). still utterly untouchable as far as amazing ear candy goes.

"L'ivresse de la vitesse", still one of the most impossible sounding records of any time, and if you can find this one - http://www.discogs.com/Paul-Dolden-The-Threshold-Of-Deafening-Silence/release/1555768 - grab it. But if you can't find it, he remastered most of it for the album "Seuil De Silences", which drops one (great) piece and breaks up the program with two new pieces in the later style.

One thing about the new album -- 2-5 minute tracks! With 'Délires De Plaisirs' or 'L'ivresse' it was always symphonic-form 15-20 minute tracks often with long intros you had to strap yourself in for, but it's very much worth noting on this new album, he's taken what he does and made them really work as individual bursts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdT7MVwYOt0

pdf of the score to 'veils', pretty fascinating

http://res.electrocd.com/partition_pdf/Dolden_Veils.pdf

thanks to this blog for the pointer - http://wave-edge.blogspot.com/2014/11/paul-dolden-capac-7.html

Going to a John Oswald/Paul Dolden retrospective concert tonight! Excited!