GD023 Jocelyn Robert - Cycloides
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Purchase digital download from ganxy
This is the first release in GD Stereo’s Improvisational Architecture series. Cycloïdes is a work for disklavier by artist Jocelyn Robert. Trained as an architect, Jocelyn left the profession in 1989 to concentrate on situationist strategies in art: urban performances, “derive” inspired projects, recordings from buildings and soundtracks for cities.
Jocelyn writes: “sound as a set of physical, political, geographical forces, which, when working in a network, create a situation we call music. The concept of mistakes in music has always been one that intrigued me. My first player piano project, Le piano flou, was made twenty years ago from that starting point. The pieces I wrote then were composed from an analysis of what could be called mistakes in my —below average— piano playing. In this new work, Cycloïdes, the software doesn’t anaylize mistakes or odd notes : it simply keeps them in. No forgetting, no forgiving. This project is a series of live improvisations, in which software keeps the notes I played and forces me to take them as the basis for the next ones, whether I liked them or not, whether they were right or wrong. The music continuously comes back unto itself, reaffirming its instant past, in an almost cyclic manner, in a cycloïdic one.”
A compact disc release in a 5” X 7” sleeve. Printed with non-toxic inks on recycled paper by Rolling Press via Middlepress in Brooklyn NY.
An aural and tactile experience in a limited edition of 200.
Tracks (no titles):
1 – 7:53
2 – 6:05
3 – 3:58
4 – 6:12
5 – 4:15
6 -14:19
7 – 7:33
Review: The Sound Projector, August 2014
” It’s also interesting, although not remarked on by Jocelyn Robert in his notes, to suppose that there is a constant tension between human (performance) and machine (memory) taking place, a situation where the blind perfection of the computer is almost working in opposition to the intuitive and errant movements of the pianist. I further suppose that this is a situation that might escalate into an absurd cloning process not unlike the scene in Fantasia, where Mickey Mouse’s broomstick slaves get out of control. Anyway, I should have said this at the start, but this is also beautiful music to listen to, and fans of Morton Feldman’s piano compositions should check this out instantly. Brittle, precise, clean, yet very emotional somehow.”
—Ed Pinset
Review: The Wire, January 2014
”...listen to Robert’s faltering flow of notes, suspended between direction and drift as firm departures coincide with unexpected arrivals.”
—Julian Cowley
Review: Vital Weekly #904, October 29, 2013
”...quite pleasant music to hear. I had, maybe, a hard time thinking what the ‘improvisational architecture’ meant, of which this is the first in a series…Instead I heard a fine disc of piano music, which I thought was fine enough.”
—Frans de Waard
