Best of 2021: Music for Bending Light and Stopping Time
—headphonecommute.com
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Ultra-minimalist explorations of space, tone and the act of listening itself, from ever-perceptive Angeleño, Richard Chartier (Pinkcourtesyphone), who typically lurks at the threshold of the listening experience.
Appearing one year on from his digital album with longtime accomplice William Basinski, Chartier is left to his own devices here with signature, beguiling results that fascinate the ears as only he tends to. The title ‘Interreferences’ succinctly defines his interest in music at its broadest and most specific, with what is perhaps the most enchanting definition of his intentions to “explore the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, perception, and the act of listening itself.” We’re sure that my of you are well aware and appreciative of Chartier’s role as a key modern minimalist, but if you’re new to his work, and/or perhaps growing tired of “ambient” music’s limits, you would do very well to check in here for a portal to other vital planes of atmospheric music.
The six part, hour long work arrives in the wake of the artist’s 50th birthday, and finds him pondering fundamental, even existentialist, questions about his work. “Why these sounds? What is the attraction to these sounds? How did I arrive at these compositions and their placements?” While we haven’t got the answers, we can comment that the purpose and meaning of Chartier’s music, to us at least, still beckons the mind to rarified headspaces, suggesting a slowing or calming of time and expansion of personal space that encourages thoughts to occur in a way so much other music doesn’t. It’s a music of presence and inference that will sound different to each user, and from day to day, and feels like a sort of sacred invisible mountain that one doesn’t climb but rather circles from the base.
—boomkat.com
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Richard Chartier records are the sonic equivalent of a Rothko painting. Drones of colors that capture the attention until one flows into the other creating an inaudible fade… able to build a symphony of timbres with slight variations on the theme. IMMERSIVE.
—Rockerilla, IT
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New & Notable: Renowned sound artist Richard Chartier’s latest LP is a subtle, minimalist study that asks listeners to dig deep and pay close attention.
—bandcamp.com
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…Chartier’s masterful static monument Interreferences. From gently distorted circuit whimpering, the American generates 6 interferences, i.e. superimpositions in which the vibrations actually penetrate each other, sometimes amplifying, sometimes extinguishing. One hour of highly abstract ambient for wave theorists.
—westzeit.de
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Nettement plus ascétiques at épurées, les six Interreferences en forme de drones de Richard Chartier tracent des lignes de vibrations statiques ou montées en crescendo, à la fois austères et animées chacune de leur propre texture, comme six traits de crayons réalisés avec des fusains différents, plus ou moins appuyés sur la feuille.
—Revue & Corrigée, FR
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Among the large number of styles with in the wider Experimental electronics genre, minimalism is the most intelligent, abstract and, at the same time, radical. Its roots go back to the very beginning of the experimental music genre, as an offshoot of classical musical traditions. One of the recognized authorities and masters of this style is the American musician, composer and designer Richard Chartier, who had a great influence on the development of minimalism in electronic music. Active since 1998, Richard’s discography contains more than forty full-length albums, several EPs and singles, as well as a fairly large number of works made in collaboration with other musicians and projects. He also owns the label LINE, on which he publishes, in addition to his own releases, albums by like-minded artists. In late spring 2021, Australian label Room40 released Interreferences—a new full-length album. It appeared as either a CD or digital download.
The album cover is a monochrome image made in a minimalistic manner. On a white background, there is a circle created from a large number of irregularly distributed dots. This gives the impression of a ghostly texture, reminiscent of a kind of spiral swirling clouds. But, the feeling of something organic is also created. The cover doesn’t feature any inscriptions or information. In my opinion, this is a great graphic work done by the very talented artist Linn Meyers. I also think it fits perfectly with the sound of the album.
The album runs fifty-eight minutes long and consists of six tracks. It should be said that the tracks are named simply: Interreference.1, Interreference.3 and so on. However, the tracks are arranged not according to their serial numbers, but in the order that Richard conceived – 3,4,6,7,5,1. Also, you’ll note that track number 2 is missing. This track and track number 8 are released as a digital EP, which is available on Richard’s bandcamp page. The EP is entitled Interreferences II.
As for the musical part of the album itself, here Richard presents the listener with a classical example of his sound. It’s a symbiosis of minimalistic ambient and drone with touches of noise. It is impossible to select any track separately. The sound canvas seems to move continuously, flowing from light air hums and distant white noises to rather low pulsating frequencies and almost static rustling textures. The sound captures the entire space of the listener, even though this music is very minimalistic. Sounds and textures very rarely sound at the same time, slowly and lazily transforming and giving way to each other. However, the thoughtful compositionality and direction are clearly felt here. This is exactly why Richard Chartier is seen as the master of minimalistic electronic sound art. The atmosphere of the album is abstract, from the sound part to the cover. It is just a sound and its variations without any specific ideas and concepts linked to it- this is purest sound art for the sake of sound itself.
As for comparisons with other projects and musicians working in a similar style, here I would try to avoid such cliches since Richard is one of the main names in this scene and many are influenced by his work. Did he do something new and unexpected on this album? Probably not. But in this case, stability means quality. I don’t think most of Richard’s fans expect any dizzying experiments from him. Nevertheless, Interreferences is a very strong and interesting album that I recommend to all fans of experimental electronics, and especially to those who love minimalism in music.
—musiquemachine.com
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L’elettronicista e superminimalista della Virginia, che dal 19998 sforna almeno un paio di dischi all’anno, festeggia il suo cinquantesimo compleanno regalandosi e regalandoci quasi un’ora di droni limaciosi e tangenzialmente metallurgici, tenebrosi rombi, motori diesel fermi al semaforo, gong lesionati — il tutto colante attraverso ipnotiche incessanti microvariazioni. Ottimo se vi serve la colonna sonora per un documentario su una centrale nucleare deflagrata (6/7)
—Blow Up, IT
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Chartier works through its deep minimalist sound scans where space and underground tones, encourage listening perceptions. The sounds are imperceptible and approach silence. Trying to answer Richard Chartier’s question, “what is the attraction to these sounds?”, in my opinion there is an enigmatic nature of the atmospheres he creates, producing a certain tension in the expectation of the listener, as it does not know what sounds will deploy their wings. Faced with this uncertainty and even fear of the unknown, the listener is attracted by the enigma that the music unfold and the sound waves that revolve through our heads like a hypnotic mantra. Interreferences with its endless drones and the feeling of spatiality invite to a trip where the sensory wakes up with force in the listener.
—loop.cl
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Recent brief exchanges with Richard Chartier have conveyed to this writer the idea of a sensibility profoundly impacted by realities inconceivable until a couple of decades ago or so. There comes a time in an artist’s life when, little comforted by surrounding circumstances, combining intellectual honesty and one’s own inner strength remains the lone way out of the horrible place where authentic communication can no longer happen. In the case of Chartier, furtherly spurred to deep reflection by having recently reached the age of 50, the repercussions of serious self-questioning accompanied the release of Interreferences, a cycle of minimalist wonders composed from 2018 to 2020. Monochromatic only for the deaf, they’re instead rich in shadows of suggestion and ineffable chiaroscuros inducing transcendental states.
Chartier reports on the abandoning of painting – his previous expressive medium – in favor of sound, the latter offering uniquely intangible prerogatives compared to the manuality of the pictorial gesture and, in general, figurative art as an inefficient means for expliciting inwardness. Sound can be perceived by audiences endowed with advanced receptive faculties as an abstraction in itself, lacking the analytical components that would pollute its purity. The origin of what is heard in these six tracks is unknown, yet the effects on the psyche are very clear. Between the annihilation of will and ego and the detection of hidden structures, elegantly ominous drones self-regenerate at safe distance from materiality in atmospheres typically devoid of garish colors. The meanings do not appear instantly, but will likely transpire in some of the countless centrifuges of ordinary logic characterizing the stages of detachment from everyday’s mediocrity.
The composer recommends listening through headphones, which in truth reveals more about the gathering mechanisms inherent to the resonant spectrum. Disobedient as ever, I repeatedly ignored the tip to test my speakers, letting fluid sonic matters and inscrutable reverberations affect room, mood, and psychological relationship to the visible exterior of that moment. One of the questions Chartier asks himself is “why these sounds?”. It’s probably because they were meant, without anyone knowing it beforehand, to permeate someone’s soul in order to unburden it from pain. And so, even when I didn’t understand, I actually did. By remaining silent, exclusively aided by the electroacoustic pulse, the silly noisiness of a few lingering impractical thoughts was once again put to shame.
—Touching Extremes, IT
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Minimalist music is a natural reaction to what is happening in the world. Individual strives to find peace in its everyday life. Even unconsciously he feels the pressure. Media overwhelmed with digital trash, tons of hidden advertisement that develop unwanted desires, etc. Ambient music is like a post-modernistic meditation. No beats, no rhythms. Nothing to hold on to. Tracks build up around silence, ultra tones and sounds on the edge of hearing. Headphones can easily serve a purpose of temples for deep and relaxing meditations. Some might say music like this can be created easily. It sounds so simple. That might be true to some extend yet not all artists can press the needed buttons to actually make the “diving” effect happen.
As I’ve been following Richard’s work for quite some time—I noticed a definite blueprint kind of vibe that gives his works this magic, almost ether feel. A delicate play with gentle tones and piercing particles that dance in a hypnotizing manner. As we step into this land of interreferences—the very first sound already feels like it’s coming from the very back of your consciousness. You won’t experience those in real life but at the same time they feel so natural as if your inner self is listening to them. It has always been pursuing this existence through a sound palette like this. Lush and soothing. Drowned in drones and myriad in nature. We continue to levitate in this place. Blindfolded. Like walking completely senseless through radium ashes as we find ourselves almost in the middle of “interreference.6.” The sub waves are closing in and you’re starting to feel the low pulsation going deeper into your subconsciousness. A distant filtered texture is side chained with vibrating drones. Another monsoon of static flies over your head like an avalanche. You feel safe. Probably you don’t feel as yourself anymore with all the psychic manipulations Chartier did to your sound perception. Still it feels right. You feel calm as we’re almost half way into the release.
“interreference.7” is something different. You suddenly feel a change—like a purification nova. Cleansing and steady. Eons of noises go throughout and you suddenly obtain a certain relief. As if you were brought from some kind of a trance into reality. But that’s not how you imagined it would sound like, right? You drift away with the decay of the final drone in this piece as your mind morphs your senses. Like an AI, you adapt and realign with “interreference.5.” This landscape has no particular form but for some reason you feel that it has a taste and smell. Although the taste feels more like a smell and vice-versa. A grey scent with halothane dust. Visions of abstract come across you as phantoms. They fade in and out so that you could feel present and needed. They speak to you in the language of decay. It seems like they worship you. And you worship them. As they begin to whisper more gently—a deep low kick suddenly pulls you in itself as we’re closing on “interreference.1.” Infrared shadows evoke a strange feel of presence. Like a chamber with no one inside yet you feel the mass of something gravitating you. Slowly bit by bit the last pieces of your former self is being consumed by this ink. Viscosity of the texture has now become one with you. You thought you had already passed beyond these halogen halls but it’s only the exodus to the land of the drone.
An extraordinary release by the very master of reductionist minimalist electronic music Richard Chartier once again proves us that he’s the grand monk of the holy temple of drones. Simple yet insanely impactful. Less is more. Always.
—igloomag.com
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the imagination may be reckoned with a test of our capacity to control. when we are faced with reduction, we seek, immediately, to know that which has been removed; and when we see restraint, we demand to be told what it is that might have been. Mr. Chartier would present us with the opportunity to examine what a particular quality might be, but on being offered the opportunity, what can easily happen is that nothing can satisfy the automatic engagement of putting things in place which were designed to be left alone. one may say (and indeed probably does) that this is of the essence, but the stated purpose is always thwarted; “nature abhors a vacuum” goes the phrase – but more apropos is something to the tune of “people will not rest without knowing the answers.” by forcing contemplation of emptiness, we see that it is full and are repulsed, and by seeing directly that that which is full is intrinsically empty, we have the carpet pulled out from underneath our feet. when works such as these by Mr. Chartier leave the nest and fly into the flight paths of complete strangers, we might ask if the plane will come down as the birds are sucked into the engines, or will the sensible pilot avoid the situation altogether by means of pretending that another direction was intended all along? we can resort to the negation of the creator’s intention if we so wish; but this opens up so many discrepancies that the effort needed for the denial results in us never being able to experience something outside ourselves, and only the validation of the expectations built up in us by happenstance and lack of (self-) direction. if these “spaces” (for want of a better word) have been filled by our lack of capability to directly apprehend, how can we ever know that they lie in wait? this is an exercise both for the reader *and* the listener.
—Andrew M. McKenzie (the hafler trio) for datawv.com
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…a calm, near static yet ever so slowly evolving take on Drone-infused Deep Listening Music, partly infused with a feel of deserted atmospheric desolation and an explorative approach towards carefully arranged, yet speaker shaking low end pulses which provide a more powerful, ground shaking impact than most releases and compositions to be found within this specific field. If you’re fond of and familiar with the works of artists like Francisco Lopez, Daniel Menche, Tarkatak and likeminded composers this album shall be a worthwhile addition to your collection for a reason. Check.
—nitestylez.de
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Richard Chartier, der als Pinkcourtesyphone gerne morbiden Dark-Ambient-Soundscapes in modrigen Ballsälen nachstellt, verfolgt unter seinem bürgerlichen Namen einen extremen Minimalismus des Beinahe-Nichts. Interreference (Room40) kommt für diese Verhältnisse beinahe üppig daher, was Soundfülle und Struktur angeht. Der Minimalismus liegt im körnigen, beinahe weißen (oder besser gesagt: pinken) Rauschen der Synthesizer.
—groove.de
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The six pieces of Interreferences are extremely minimalistic drones, quiet and slowly evolving, while at the same presenting intricate sounds – “pulsing low energy matched against a restrained upper-frequency detail” – that grab your attention from the beginning to the end. Richard Chartier suggests listening on headphones, but I also love how frequencies like this find their way in the open acoustics of the room they are played in. Only one question keeps bothering me: whatever happened to Interreference.2?
—ambientblog.net
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…extreme minimalism of low intensities and sometimes watery. So the producer’s last album seems to work purely abstractly through wavy forms without beginning and end— pieces of caged time following one another. Chartier focuses on the sensory nature of sound rather than a reasoned narrative.
—toperiodiko.gr
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Die sieben Stücke sind im Grunde ein großes, welches nur dann und wann durch Ausblenden der aufgebauten elektronischen Wände leicht unterbrochen werden. Die Stücke basieren auf dunklen elektronischen Drones – in einer Frequenz die schon in Richtung des nicht mehr Hörbaren geht. Dazu rauscht die Elektronik, und zischende Sounds durchziehen den Raum. Die Klänge sind ruhig und mäandern vor sich hin, aber schon bei geringer Lautstärke und der richtigen Basseinstellung vermögen Sie Fenster und/oder Holzfußböden zum Vibrieren zu bringen.
Die Stücke in sich unterscheiden sich durchaus in ihren Klangtönen, wenn auch alle im dunklen Bereich angesiedelt sind. Da es hier auch um die Atmosphäre, das Erfüllen des Raumes mit Klang geht, gibt es nur wenige Nuancen. In “Interreference.6“ zum Beispiel ertönen Klänge wie von Düsenflugzeugen, die sich in die mäandernden Klänge einbauen und somit für Abwechlung im Sound sorgen, doch das ist die Ausnahme.
Insgesamt ist dies hier der pure Sound. Dieser vermag aber ob seiner Klarheit und dunklen Stärke zu überzeugen und den Hörer durchaus in den Bann zu ziehen. Zum Abtauchen in den eigenen Traum Noir.
—musikansich.de
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As to the form it takes, the material here is very highly controlled and refined, one senses, with slow-moving and gradual change realised over quite a long time – most of the pieces here are around 10-12 minutes in length – and it’s done through combining two very simple approaches, a subsonic-type bass pulsation with all manner of subdued, delicate details floating somewhere in the top range. You’ll notice it’s impossible to really “locate” these sounds or forms, and if there’s an imaginary space being created in these episodes, the intrepid listener will have many hours of fun trying to recreate or plot that space. Feel free to play back at high volumes to truly sensate the sumptuous surfaces that emanate from Chartier’s creative production units. Another endearing aspect of the fellow’s work that is emerging today is that he himself is not really able to say much or write much about his work, instead positing various proposals and lines of enquiry in the form of questions. He perceives music creation as a mysterious process, a stance which I can agree with. He genuinely can’t say why this sound or that sound, or why and how he ended up placing them where he did. Ultimately he would be happy if we just listened to the sound as sound – “focus on the sensorial nature rather than an explicit narrative or reasoning”, to use his own expression.
All of this record works brilliantly for me, especially the third track which I think is called ‘Interreference.6’, and which over 12:50 mins hangs and floats in the air insisting on its own ineluctable and ineffable presence. Ambient, this isn’t; great minimal sound art, it is.
—thesoundprojector.com
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I will speak on a personal note first – Richard Chartier is one of the first concerts I went to. He turned thirty years old and they gave him some Entenmann’s Fudge Chocolate Cake in that iconic box. Blue and white, it was pretty small, but he still divided it among the two-dozen worth of the audience. Thus, I remember the experience fondly, and it also showed me you can explore deep, deep experimentation and be a thoroughly decent human being.
On ‘Interreferences’, Richard Chartier turns the volume up. For him, that does not mean much – his compositions straddle the line between sound and silence very well. He writes litanies for the unsung heroes of our world – humming refrigerators, electric transformers off in the distance, windmills whirring by in the countryside. I appreciate his attention to the small sounds; the ones people so often ignore.
Easily the most punk thing you will probably hear in your life because these sounds are so quiet older people with their damaged hearing will be unable to hear. That’s pretty punk to me at least. Here there are nods to Zoviet France’s drones, done digital instead of their industrial churn. With a more aggressive and rhythmic stance than usual these tracks are lovely, subtle things. One can sense that artistry applies to all aspects of the sound, for they look outright beautiful when watched as a wavelength.
A nice change of scenery for Richard Chartier, still within the same neighborhood of his old sound but perhaps in a fuller house.
—beachsloth.substack.com
