Entry 15: Gilles Gobeil – Voix Blanche

There are some really cool sounds in this piece. I like the fluid seemless textures at the beginning, its so persistent and intense. The first three and a half minutes of the work are essentially boiling over with tension until the long awaited resolution. I really like the slow melting nature of the piece and the additive textures that seem to accumulate with a snowball type of effect. This piece definitely seems to be organized in waves, and the use of silence is very well placed as it many times retains or prolongs the tensions built. I love how this piece is constantly morphing and there is always a clear sense of direction. Gobeil makes great use of high frequencies in this work and he creates some beautiful glass-like textures with them. The frequency manipulation in the piece is very effective especially the siren-like effects that Gobeil employs throughout the piece in various ranges. The variations on the siren effect create an interesting thread within the piece and the resultant fluxuations in the texture have a curious hipnotic effect. I really like the warped feel of the orchestra sound manipulations and how they are adapted into the piece. They sound like echoes from another time in that the sounds are very distant from the rest of the piece, and they function in the piece in an out of context way in a briefer manner than most of the other sounds in the piece. Such tension, Gobeil got pretty pychological with this one.

~ by mathiasc on November 4, 2007.