François J. Bonnet is a Franco-Swiss composer and electroacoustic musician based in Paris. In addition to being the Director of INA GRM (Institut national de l'audiovisuel / Groupe de Recherches Musicales -- the latter being one of the birthplaces of electroacoustic experimentation in the late 1950's), François J. Bonnet is also a writer and theoretician: his books The Order of Sounds: A Sonorous Archipelago, The Infra-World, and After Death are published in English by Urbanomic. He is also the author of the manifesto The Music to Come, published by Shelter Press in 2020, and the co-editor of the SPECTRES series of publications, a joint project of INA GRM and Shelter Press. As a musician, Bonnet often works under the project name Kassel Jaeger. He has collaborated with artists such as Oren Ambarchi, Giuseppe Ielasi, Stephan Mathieu, Stephen O'Malley, Jim O'Rourke, Akira Rabelais, James Rushford, or Gisèle Vienne. Kassel Jaeger's works are a complex balance between concrète experimentalism, ambient noise, and electroacoustic improvisation. He has released several albums on various labels such as Editions Mego, Shelter Press, Black Truffle, Senufo Edition, etc. While his own music has been played in renowned venues and festivals all over the world, François J. Bonnet has been working closely with groundbreaking composer and electronic music pioneer Eliane Radigue, and has been performing regularly her electronic music in concert.
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SED 073LP
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Sedimental presents the newest work, A Rift In the Horizon's Wall (ARITHW), from Paris-based electronic musician and sound artist Kassel Jaeger (François Bonnet), realized during a week-long artist residency at Epsilon Spires in Brattleboro, Vermont in June of 2023. In addition to creating and performing ARITHW he also performed Eliane Radigue's "L'île resonante," bookending the week. ARITHW was developed during an artist residency at the Epsilon Spires art center based in Brattelboro, VT, USA. During this residency, François J. Bonnet appropriated the space to create original music. Using their 1906 Estey 3-Manual Organ Pipe as his primary source, Bonnet then set about exploring secondary instrumental sources, such as the in house grand piano, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the acoustics of the three-tiered sanctuary of the former historic church (built 1889) that is now Epsilon Spires. ARITHW unfolds like an interstice, a gap between two frames on a flat surface generated by the organ, a surface that shatters to reveal an unclear, ghostly, and elusive space. In this work, Bonnet focuses on more instrumental material, only to subvert it and dilute it further before melting it into an uncertain acoustic space that evokes reminiscences of Erik Satie, Walter Marchetti, or even Eliane Radigue, as well as his own previous music and the liminal electroacoustic climates that have been his trademark for many years. A profound work of subtle complexity and suspended tension. ARITHW also refers to the vernacular literary mythology of New England, a land, at the same time, still attached to Europe and torn from it. The album artwork consists of works by Bonnet, with the first edition accompanied by a limited edition of 70 unique engravings produced by the artist at Brattleboro-based First Proof Press. The residency and project were made possible by a Jazz & New Music Creation Grant from FACE Foundation, Supporting French-American Cultural Exchange in Education and the Arts. François J. Bonnet is a Franco-Swiss composer and electroacoustic musician based in Paris. He is a writer and theoretician: his books The Order of Sounds: A Sonorous Archipelago, The Infra-World, and After Death are published in English by Urbanomic. He is also the co-editor of the SPECTRES series of publications. As a musician, Bonnet often works under the project name Kassel Jaeger. He has collaborated with artists such as Oren Ambarchi, Giuseppe Ielasi, Stephan Mathieu, Stephen O'Malley, Jim O'Rourke, Akira Rabelais, James Rushford and Gisèle Vienne.
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BT 069LP
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2021 restock. Black Truffle present Meith, a new composition in two parts from prolific composer/theorist François Bonnet. Usually operating under his Kassel Jaeger moniker, Bonnet is a major figure in contemporary electronics and electro-acoustic music, collaborating with artists such as Lucy Railton, Jim O'Rourke, and Stephen O'Malley, and releasing his work on labels including Editions Mego, Senufo, and Shelter Press. Always meticulously detailed yet immediately affecting, Bonnet's work situates itself at a very personal intersection between the traditions of academic electronic and electroacoustic music, and a more shadowy, underground group of approaches to experimental sound: kosmische musik, the tape murk of the 1980s underground, the haunted ambience of Christoph Heemann & Co. Meith immediately welcomes you into its densely layered sound world of electronic tones, positive organ, and unidentifiable field-recorded textures. Almost static yet constantly in flux, it deliberately opens itself up to repeated and varied listening: from a distance, its many voices cohere into a monolithic plane of sound, while closer inspection reveals myriad details and momentary events. Like a drop of ink spreading through water, harmonic material present in one voice gradually fans out into the whole arrangement, creating fleeting moments of unity amid the constantly shifting waves of tone and texture. Far from the austerity of some contemporary electro-acoustic music, Meith affects the listener as overwhelming organic; its individual layers are unstable and at times near-chaotic, imbued with life. Though it can appear almost formless, the piece undergoes major shifts throughout its duration, from the austere dissonance of the opening moments to the surging harmonies that appear midway through the second side before the piece gradually dissolves into a spectral glimmer.
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LTNC 017LP
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"A new work by François J. Bonnet -- the director of INA GRM -- deconstructing the binarity 'smooth' and 'striated'. 'If 'smooth' is linked to 'nomos', within an open space of organic distribution, then 'striated' is associated with 'logos', as a kind of gridded enclosure. An interplay is mapped out, whereby pulsations become textures and layers, and where rhythmic elements are teased from the qualities and densities of sounds, rather than deployed as pre-determined sound objects in their own right, abstracted and frozen onto a temporal grid. 'Striation' is made audible only through the sonic landscape it inhabits, in the same way that animal camouflage comes alive in the woods and long grass, becoming redundant and inert out in the open.'"
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EMEGO 235LP
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The frontier for French electroacoustic mystical music has traversed much ground since Pierre Schaeffer shuffled on the past and laid out a map without borders or designated ground. Seventy years in this land of the fried, there are a plethora of Ideas and ongoing potential coming from all corners of the globe. Inheriting the wisdom of past masters whilst forging a signature style of his own, Kassel Jaeger sits as one of the premier explorers of these unknown worlds today. Comprised recently recorded tracks, Kassel Jaeger presents a work of revisits and re-workings, one which acts as a hinge in both closing this particular chapter, whilst opening up the windows to a new sound world. In Aster, rich deep music is replete with dark ambient sonorities swirling amongst intense buzzing tones. Often chilling and ominous, this is a fearless music with abstracted corners and dynamic leverage. Unafraid to embed itself in the ongoing whirlpool of sonic progress. Jaeger's output remains a thrilling body of exploration and ongoing transformation. Photos by Ende Wieder; Design by Stephen O'Malley.
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EMEGO 183LP
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Kassel Jaeger is a Swiss-French artist based in Paris, France, and is a member of the GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales). Toxic Cosmopolitanism is his second full-length release for Editions Mego -- a release which explores and questions the very nature of the material experiments contained within. Each side consists of two clearly-defined sections based on the same material. Side A comprises of "Toxic Cosmopolitanism," a large-scale work based on distinct sounds of different cultures, instruments such as the balafon, tremolo, gnbri, gee, Tibetan gongs, pan flutes and the like are all deployed but rendered of the sonic properties identifying them to a specific region. The question that lies at the heart of this experiment: is such a swirl a creative process or a destructive one -- this is the ambiguity of toxic cosmopolitanism. "Exposure Scales 1-4" use sounds exclusively derived from the "Toxic Cosmopolitanism" material. Whereas "TC" is more about subjecting sounds to structure, "Exposure Scales" builds almost static textures. The results are an honest exploration of both culture and form. At once cerebral, enlightening and immensely rich in scope and sonic vision.
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EMEGO 149LP
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Kassel Jaeger is a French-Swiss artist based in Paris and a member of the GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales). Deltas is his fifth album, and first on vinyl. "Campo Del Cielo" (2012): Commissioned by Espace Mendes France for a performance at The Planetarium in Poitiers, France, diffused on an 8-channel system. The sound material is exclusively derived and processed from stone recordings. The first part, "Aerolite (flying stone)," is mainly based on aerial field recording of stone manipulations. The second part, "Baetylus (sacred stone)," is made with electromagnetic capture of meteorite resonances. This meteorite was part of the Campo Del Cielo site. "Deltas" (2012): "Whenever the volume of water is so great as to counteract and almost neutralize the force of tides and currents, and in all cases where the latter agents have not sufficient power to remove to a distance, the whole of the sediment periodically brought down by rivers, deltas are produced." "A Guest + a Host α" (2011): Commissioned for Ina-GRM's Retro/Actif at La Gaîté Lyrique, Paris, France. Originally displayed on 16 channels, this work is exclusively composed with non-processed and original sounds made with the legendary Coupigny Modular Synth housed in the Groupe de Recherches Musicales' studios. This work is structured as three dialectical parts: electricity + crystals = spectrum. "A Guest + Host = Ghost" (M. Duchamp). Mastered with Robert Hampson at 116 Bunker, Paris, May 2012. Cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates and Mastering, Berlin, July 2012. Layout by Stephen O'Malley.
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