So you’re two internationally recognized electronic composers who meet for the first time at Montreal’s 2000 MUTEK and discover a shared interest in exchanging ideas. What do you do next? The conventional step would be to remix each other’s tracks, but if you’re American-born 12k founder Richard Chartier and Russian Ivan Pavlov (aka Coh), you do something much more imaginative: devise the elegant concept Chessmachine whereby one player’s musical move is countered by the other’s reply. You start with an initial overture by Chartier in October 2001 and end, fifteen moves later, with Pavlov’s coda in August 2003. Rather than sixteen unrelated pieces, then, we get each player attempting to convince the other of a given move’s aptness while listeners witnessing their moves attempt to glean threads that connect one to another. The Cold War metaphor underscores the piece, of course, but the collection is ultimately as much about community and cooperation as it is about adversarial strategizing. All of which, admittedly, sounds great conceptually but how does the idea play out musically? In general, the brief pieces are beatless soundscapes, textural exercises teeming with unusual electronic noises. Chartier’s contributions are more meditative and becalmed while Pavlov’s are relatively quiet yet exude traces of coiled aggression, as if they’re straining to unshackle themselves from the work’s stylistic constraints. Chartier deploys his familiar sonic arsenalÜminimal bass tones, subliminal throbs, pinging clusters, aquatic clicks, wipes, and whirrsÜwhile Pavlov counters with a louder yet equally expansive array of scuffles, clattering crackle, glistening tones, and lapping shuffles. The duo sometimes seems to indulge in a literal game of sorts, with Chartier refusing to be drawn into a more aggressive tangle and clinging to quieter terrain. For those keeping score, one might deem Chartier the victor as Pavlov generally aligns his style closer to his partner’s micro approach. Ultimately, it’s a project that deservedly warrants admiration for the originality and execution of its concept yet musically these works offer mainly formal satisfactions given their abstract and emotionally barren qualities.
—textura.org
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For this year’s opening of the Mutek Festival, Ivan Pavlov and Richard Chartier presented their Chessmachine project for the first time. According to the state of chess in former days, where the contrahents , geographically divided from each other, had to exchange their moves over a longer period of time, our both artists exchanged soundfiles over 2 years with the intention never to let the other one musically gain overhand. After 16 of these moves (16 pieces on the cd) they declared the game to be over and banished it on cd for the afterworld. While Mr. Pavlov starts up with loud, intrusive, violent noise already in the beginning tying to intimidate Mr. Chartier, he steers indefatigable against it with more thoughtful sounds. This has the conclusion, that both parties are balanced out by the middle of the cd and it really gets exciting to the end. who won is for everyone self to judge. definitive is: the listener is one of them. ****.
—De:bug, Germany
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With the recent death of Ronald Reagan and extradition proceedings surrounding former chess champion Bobby Fisher, a wealth of unpleasant childhood Cold War memories bubble to the surface: the duck-and-cover worries of nuclear Armageddon, heated gestures in Eastern Europe, Latin and South America, and South Asian military theatres, propaganda machinery eliminating dissent on both sides, and so on. All this psychological baggage from the decades long conflict between the United States and the former Soviet Union is brought to the fore in this four year collaborative effort from noise sculptors Ivan Pavlov and Richard Chartier. Where the game of chess ceases to be a mathematical progression of pieces along and eight-by-eight square tablet, and begins to mirror its historical origins as a strategic tool for the pure practice of human conflict, Chessmachine raises several interesting questions beyond those presented by the obvious duality of chest-thumping superpowers. At what point does artistic collaboration become discord, where one artist (inadvertantly or not) guides or controls the other’s work, and does the audience fit into this framework(if at all)? Further, where have our technologocal polemics guided us in the creation of modern electronic sound itself? Through the recorded work and its caustic, primal live performance at the 2004 Mutek festival in Montreal, even by way of the “gentlemanly” opening handshake, Pavlov quickly exchange gestures of implied. threatened violence, suggesting adarker range and protocol of masculine primate desire, from simplebanal control, to the full-on (nuclear) annihilation of the other party. The listening audience is immediately rendered a passive feminine party to the sonic damage, much as the “abstract” border countries between old Warsaw Pact and NATO member states rack up megadeaths in simulated war plans. Further, the two artists’ dramatic use of Macintosh and Windows, oppossing computer platform “superpowers” in the generation abd presentation of these abrasive vicious sounds underscores the surreal, Hoylesque futility of the conflict being presented. The aural substance of the electronic exchange itself is at once obviously, emotionally pitiful, despite its superficial ferocity_miserable swipes and pulse, weak sinusoid sweeps, empty echoes and atrophied static, all thes platitudes representing impotent internalization and escalation of Pavlov and Chartier’s bitter, seemingly endless conflict. With promises of future “collaboration,” it appears the two musicians do not hold much hope for the species.
—Grooves, US
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A ma gauche, Ivan Pavlov, colosse russe aux faux airs de macho, vivant ˆ Stockholm, et spécialisé dans une musique digitale trs abstraite, mais volontiers onirique (publiée notamment par Raster-Noton, le label de Carsten Nicolai) sous le nom de COH. A ma droite, Richard Chartier, Américain basé (Washington, DC), homosexuel revendique, et dont la musique, non moins abstraite, aborde des horizons plus rythmiques. La premire fois que les deux musiciens se rencontrent, au festival Mutek de Montréal 2000, ils décident d’entamer une collaboration ˆ distance, a la manire des joueurs d’échecs qui, jadis, pris dans le blocus de la Guerre Froide, livraient des parties par correspondance. C’est le résultat de ce face-a-face transatlantique de quatre années, dans lequel les fichiers informatiques tiennent lieu de pion, que publie aujourd?hui le label Mutek. Inutile de dire qu’il n’est pas a placer entre toutes les oreilles. Mais les amateurs d?expériences inédites et de la musique électronique la plus expérimentale se doivent de s’immerger dans cette entreprise de fous et de fins stratges, fascinant labyrinthe en forme de questions/réponses ? l’un des disques les plus mentaux, les plus amiotiques parus ces dernires annéesé, selon Eric Mattson, patron du label Oral et instigateur de cette publication? La deuxime fois que Pavlov et Chartier se sont rencontrés, c’était en juin dernier, lors de la cinquime édition du festival, pour un duel de concert, séparés, évidemment, par une horloge. De nouveaux joueurs devraient bientôt tre de la partie.
—Mouvement, France
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Concepito come una vera e propria partita a scacchi, questo disco in collaborazione tra il russo Pavlov e l’americano Chartier evoca i mitici scontri U.S.A.-U.R.S.S. ai tempi della guerra fredda. E non solo perchŽ i due autori provengono da quelle nazioni (il primo si fa addirittura accreditare come sovietico!) e utilizzano piattaforme diverse (PC vs Mac), bens“ per l’approccio tattico alla composizione, sottile strategia di mosse, contromosse, botte, risposte e ponderati ragionamenti durati ben due anni. Apparentemente pi fisico e irruente, Pavlov gioca all’attacco; posato e razionale, Chartier arrocca e si difende costruendo una ragnatela di tranelli e mantenendo il match in paritˆ. E come ogni buona partita che si rispetti pu˜ risultare snervante per chi la segue, ma una volta datisi tempo ed entrati nel vivo dell’incontro se ne rimane avvinti. Un po’ come leggere L’arte della guerra di Sun Tsu.
—Rumore, Italy
