DAVID
BALULA
pellicule
CD,
Active Suspension
This is one of the new trends seeping through the electronic subculture,
slowly renewing music as a whole and thereby driving us into the new
millennium and uncharted territory music-wise. To mix electronics with
analog sound and be very extreme with both. But not extreme in the sense of
overtly brutal and in your face, actually quite the opposite. To strengthen
these opposites, obviously, and thereby create an even bigger difference
between the two points, so that the ultimate connection of the two - very
much like a steel rod being turned into a ring with the two ends formerly
apart as far as possible now touching – if it so happens, is even more
delighting, rewarding and wonderful. The method currently piling itself out
of the subconscious darkness as being the most prominent is one using, on
the one hand, melancholic and brooding guitar and piano licks, repeated
minor chords connected by blue dots of single notes, heavy on the fifth and
the seventh, slowly plucked with a great importance on emotionality and
harmony. The electronics, on the other hand, double (or triple, depends on
how you count) the opposition between these two major points by being harsh,
noisy eclectic electro-smog and noise. Beats and rhythms, if they exist at
all, are beaten and battered about (see DoF)
to make them fit by not making them fit. Sometimes the noises underneath the
analogue sounds are subtle, reduced only to the slightest whirring and
whizzing, reminding of an old movie-projector (see Sylvain
Chauveau).
The drive to do more and more extreme things is currently swinging the
pendulum onto the introverted, subdued, almost silent side. It is the return
of indie-rock emotionality when it turned into shoegazing Brit-Pop
intellectuality and spaced-out folk wisdom / genius. The latter being
usually lo-fi, which is, by turn of history, where the noise comes back in
again. It is the past versus the present to produce the future, the analogue
versus the digital to produce a new paradigm that sees no opposites between
the two. It is also traditional versus progressive, or rather one generation
of the avantgarde versus the generation before. To combine opposites in such
a manner brings out a new quality, on that is subtle and intriguing, overt
and noisy at the same time. And it will make things a lot more interesting
in the future.
David Ballula’s “pellicule” is a perfect example and a promise for
the future. He seeps his pop-sensibility into melancholic songs played on an
acoustic guitar, with the help of a female voice and a piano here and there,
then runs over them softly but with due force with a computer and electronic
gadgetry. Sometimes he seems to be quite simple, like hitting the
Forward-button on a CD-player and then recording the result. At other times
his noise-scapes are complex and apparently tailor-cut to fit the analogue /
traditional sounds. He even includes a rather large field recording as last
track on the record, to give the listener a glance at his world.
Being originally a visual artist from French-speaking Canada, I am sure
he put a lot of thought into his musical appearance. His crossbreeding of
two musical opposites is able to destroy the listeners expectations of
music, confronting him with a large number of varying electronic sounds. At
times the noise seems to get the upper hand, then there are tracks which are
almost entirely traditional at points. The final track, the pure field
recordings resolve the puzzlement in an almost zen-like theorem: If the
final track is purely analogue but the one which is furthest away from music
as we know it, what then makes music? There is no definition of music which
depends in any way on the way the music was recorded.
