Stratégies obliques

Beijing bells

Lu dans la rubrique "news" de l’Enoweb l'annonce suivante : Brian’s sound installation is currently running at Ritan Park, Beijing, China, as part of the British Council's "Sound And The City" project. It's on from 21 October – 20 November and the times are 14:00-20:00 each day. Suivent les liens qui permettent d’en savoir plus sur cette installation à l’Autel du Soleil, fondé en 1531 par Jiaqing des Ming et remanié au XVIIIe siècle par Qianlong, dont cet article de Jane Macartney du Times du 22 octobre. Eno's bells cast a spell on park life Musical pioneer’s latest work strikes a chord with Beijing’s elderly BRIAN ENO, the avant-garde British musician, brought the sound of silence to an ancient park in the heart of Beijing yesterday where, for centuries, emperors have offered up sacrifices to the sun. The Altar of the Sun is usually frequented by old men flying kites, young soldiers practising martial arts and elderly women performing their early morning tai chi exercises. Yesterday the altar received what must be one of the strangest offerings to have come its way since it was built in 1531. The mellow tone of gently chiming bells echoed around the circular walls that surround the square, flat-topped central altar. The sounds came from 16 CD players nestling at regular intervals around the foot of the wall. The small, silver gadgets on small black boxes were barely noticeable against the faded red walls topped by glistening green tiles, but they have caused quite a stir among park regulars. “Is this supposed to be music?” asked one old woman of no one in particular as she walked across the altar’s flagstones around the altar on her way home through the park. “Foreigners have so much money I suppose they can afford this. But what is it?” Elderly Chinese gathered in the evening sunshine to peer curiously at the machines, clearly fascinated by the music. They are the very audience that Eno wanted to reach. He said that he first visited China in March at the invitation of the British Council, which has organised the event, Sound and Music, to enable the Chinese to hear something other than traditional concerts. Eno said that he had been enthralled by the sight of China’s elderly in Beijing’s parks. “I looked at the life of old people and it is very beautiful and very moving,” he said. “Everybody makes music for younger people, but I wanted to make music for old people.” He chose the park of the Altar of the Sun for a musical installation partly because of the old people, whom he saw dancing, exercising, singing, strolling, chatting and playing cards, and partly because it was the quietest place he had ever visited in a large city. To create music in such a tranquil spot posed particular challenges, he said. “It’s very dangerous to add music to a quiet place. People like quiet places because they’re quiet.” So he searched for a sound that was not exactly music, would not “break” the silence but would instead intensify it. His answer was the bell. Eno, who recently spent six months in Russia, used synthesised chimes to recreate what he thought a huge Russian bell called the Tsar Kolokol would sound like. The bell was cast in St Petersburg between 1733 and 1735 and is believed to be the largest ever made. However, it was damaged in a fire two years later and was never rung. Fu Yangsheng, a gatekeeper for the nearby Divine Kitchen, where the imperial instruments of sacrifice were stored, was entranced. He squatted out in the chilly late autumn sun to listen. “Is this music? I don’t understand it, but it sounds really nice,” he said. Ah, si seulement j'étais à Pékin !

On peut sans doute se faire une idée de ce que les visiteurs du Parc Ritan peuvent entendre en écoutant le CD intitulé January 07003. Belle Studies for the Clock of the Long Now dont il est question sur le site de la Long Now Foundation ou sur l'Enoshop qui fournit cette explication de BE sur son travail : This record has grown out of the Long Now Foundation's project - the Clock of the Long Now. This is an idea to create a working clock which will mark time for ten thousand years - not really because we need more clocks in the world, but because we need more encouragement to start contemplating the possibility of a distant human future. The Clock of the Long Now is an icon to long-term thinking. When we started thinking about The Clock, we naturally wondered what kind of sound it could make to announce the passage of time. I had nurtured an interest in bells for many years, and this seemed like a good alibi for taking it a bit deeper. I began reading about bells, discovering the physics of their sounds, and became interested in thinking about what other sorts of bells might exist. My speculations quickly took me out of the bounds of current physical and material possibilities, but I considered some licence allowable since the project was conceived in a time scale of thousands of years, and I might therefore imagine bells with quite different physical properties from those we now know. And as I started trying to make bell sounds with my synthesizers, I got diverted by some of the more attractive failures.

Another Day on Earth

Des nouvelles du dernier enregistrement de Brian Eno sur l'Enoweb (10 mai 2005) : Michael Engelbrecht from Deutschlandfunk was blessed with an early promo version of Another Day on Earth and has kindly sent us the first review. So what's the verdict? "When you've waited so long for a pure (nearly pure) song album by one of your favourite singers, you can easily end up disappointed. Not in this case. Another Day On Earth doesn't have even a weak or average second. It is full of wonder, mystery, melodies, textures (rich, surprising), it has great lyrics (playful, profound, touching), a kind of non-linear plot and a thrilling ending (with one of the most shocking final pieces in the history of rock music). "There are nine songs and two pieces with spoken (female) voices. The album has a perfect sequence; Brian's old song 'Under' (which is, by the way, one of his greatest ever-recorded songs, and was a bit 'buried' in his vocal box, and thus only known to the happy few) finds a perfect place near the end of Another Day On Earth. Some of Brian's occupations with time (and bells) have a subtle influence on this masterpiece as well. And if some people are now thinking, this might be a bit too much praise - well, dear readers, let me tell you, this was an exercise in understatement!" Curieusement, la photo de la pochette montre une rue chinoise et une de ces petites superettes qui ferment tard le soir. La terre serait-elle en train de devenir "chinoise" ?

Complément du 03062005 Un site permet d'en savoir plus sur l'album, avec des extraits, photos (essentiellement prises en Chine !), interview ...

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L'Enoweb fournit les paroles des onze "chansons". Voici la dernière, la plus surprenante (cf. plus haut : "the most shocking final pieces in the history of rock music"). Bone Bomb my body so thin so tired beaten for years ploughshare to bomb so hard bone bomb bone bomb bone bomb my town so dusty so dry buildings pushed over lives heaped together young girls dreaming of beautiful deaths popstar pictures above their beds above their heads troops everything stolen except my bones now I am only bone I waited for peace and here is my peace here in this still last moment of my life

Deux mots d'explication sur ce texte trouvés dans un entretien donné par BE à Robert Sandall, "The quiet man of pop rocks out"

The most striking track on the album, Bone Bomb, is based on two newspaper articles he came across - one the confessions of a young female suicide bomber, the other an account by an Israeli doctor of how the bones of the bombers get turned into shrapnel by the explosion. "I was just trying to understand what might be in someone's mind when they do something like that," he says, modestly.

It's an extraordinary piece of music from a man who has a confession to make. "I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth. If I'm not listening to it, or doing it, I'm thinking about something else. Once an album's done, I don't want to hear it for the next six years." In short, music is a gateway for Eno, rather than a destination.