Similar to fellow ultra-minimalists Francisco Lopez and Bernhard Günter, Richard Chartier speaks of his work as necessitating a focus and concentration on the part of the listener through his studied use of sound fragments that teeter on the edge of imperceptibility. It’s proven to be the case for all three artists that the strongest and most evocative works occur when the artists step away from the teasing strategies of near-silence and fully engage audible albeit monochromatic vocabularies. Chartier has mentioned that his work is evolving through relatively louder recordings, with Retrivals 1-5 standing out as a recent and highly successful venture. Still quite subdued but only fading to silence between the five tracks of this album, Chartier has produced a pristine, gaseous album of slowly hissing drones that more often than not reference the complex fluidity of air currents. When they’re not, Chartier has interjected subtle gestural half-melodies hinting at Popul Vuh’s soundtrack to Aguirre. Exquisitely done.
—Helen Scarsdale Agency, US
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This is Richard Chartier’s latest album and in my opinion his best yet as these five tracks come across as much fuller, more involving and more developed than any of his previous material. Bearing resemblance to the aforementioned William Basinski in a floatation tank, or the more spacious and glacial works of Thomas Koner, this is an album with sub aquatic depth. I must say that as a follower of Chartier’s work I was certainly very surprised when I heard this, but such a move comes as very welcome to these ears. This is an essential release for minimalists and dark ambient overlords alike – simply stunning.
—Boomkat, UK
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Easily the best Richard Chartier album we’ve come across! The DC-based ultra-minimalist has been responsible for a number of albums so reductivist in their methodology and presentation that even with headphones, it can be a strain to discern what profundities Mr. Chartier may be offering to his audience. Yet in recent years, Chartier has been shedding the minimalist hyperbole for sterilized electronica and creating some truely evocative compositions for impressionist ambience. There was his Archival 1991 and his collaboration with William Basinski which caused us to really take notice to Chartier’s work as something beyond an exercise in ultra-minimalism; and now there’s Retrieval 1-5. (the original EP 1-2) has now been revamped for cd where it really belongs. Basinski, Thomas Koner, Lustmord (e.g. Where The Black Stars Hang) and Keith Berry would all be reference points for the steady dronescaping that Chartier musters on these five tracks which were in fact retrieved from old analog material Chartier produced in the ’90s. These beautifully rippled and hushed drones may not have the academic rigor that won Chartier the Honorable Mention for Ars Electronica, but they are far more evocative and emotionally connected than any of his earlier recordings. Recommended!
—Aquarius Records, US
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Since he’s not new in reworking his own vintage stuff, this very time Chartier sets his hands to some archival recordings going back to 1990-1997. And he does it with the usual elegance, an unmistakable syntactical style of infinitesimal flickerings, peripheral knitting, microscopic rarefactions and a meek delicacy, not so silent like in the past. The surprise value has been expired for long time here, but good old Richard stands up with class. (7)
—Blow Up, Italy
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Perhaps Richard Chartier feels it the continuous need to repolish and improve his first work. Its two CD Archival 91 and 92 show a first will to explore its own artistic construction. What can be connected with a redefinition takes with Retrieval the form of a work on sources, recorded they also in the Nineties. Retrieval (1 to 5 bus it acts of the beginning of a series) is an album, as its title indicates it, of recovery, one would be to try to prolong: restoration, reappropriation. Expressionnists qualities of the pieces are to be discovered without any induction, of the pieces which have of another title only their order of appearance. One finds then, intact, the principle minimalist of Chartier. Its control, near to the linearity, is an asymptote where the movement flirte with the entropy without never dying out there. But the compositions of Retrieval slightly repudiate this minimalism of form and expression. The reprocessed sources, analogical loops, recomposed, are densified and puffed up here, with a frequent cycle of flow and backward flow, quickly calling an organic metaphor, that of a breathing or a pulsation. From a progression in some fog, one escapes sometimes to see the heavy harmonics densifier in a blue ray steel. It is never of melody appearance, nor even of such suggestion, however the fluctuations reflected, the energy tensions and the relaxations, the powdery dissemination around a solid tubes neon, set up the features, the curves and the points of an abstract musical painting which one can describe as ambient. Dark essentially, it however does not produce any event to attach it to the dark ambient (because it would be corrupt practice). It is unfolding without incident, ice-barrier frayed in spite of its titanic solidity, quickly revealing its resemblance to that of the Master of the kind, Thomas Koner. I.e. with the paradox of the organic growth – infrabasse tectonic with the net of blue light – of a mineral musical quality.
—FearDrop, France
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Richard Chartier continues to impress with his superb range of minimal electronic work. This is quite possibly one of my favourite works by him as it plays down the ultra-high-frequency and fragmented manipulations and concentrates on a considerably deeper and more drone based sound with an achingly beautiful sense of melody. Considered, produced to perfection and quite simply marvellous this is highly, highly recommended. Bravo.
—Smallfish, UK
