Dedicated to his fellow sound artist Steve Roden, Richard Chartier’s Touch debut is a quiet contemplation that zeroes in on the microscopic details, bringing rough, inclement textures out slowly from somnolent, psychoactive drones.
When Roden passed away last year, Chartier was already almost finished with ‘On Leaving’. The two artists had been friends since 1988, when Chartier had released his first album, and had been close ever since. So when Chartier visited Roden before the pandemic, and observed how he was slipping away from the effects of Alzheimers, he realized could reflect Roden’s impact on his life with a series of contemplative compositions. This is patient, cryptically complex material, and some of the most stealthily emotional work Chartier has penned to date. It’s an album that’s minimal – Chartier asks us to listen on headphones or at the very least at a low volume – but not without movement. Like Roden, Chartier exerts a meditational level of focus on his soundscapes, coaxing us into deep listening with subtle rhythms and tonal shifts that occur almost imperceptibly.
This isn’t music that can be skipped through or placed in the background, it requires attention – the kind of concentration that can bring out its oblique movements and furtive textures. The first 10-minute piece is surprisingly organic; it’s not obvious what Chartier’s source material might be, but the gustiness suggests the outdoor environment or at the very least, some kind of obsolete technology. He cautiously blurs in synthetic sounds, never overwhelming the atmosphere with drama, but retaining a pregnant nervousness that shifts into the center of the frame on the thrumming ‘variance.2’. And by ‘variance.4’ the noise has subsided completely, leaving raw, undulating sub bass that curves underneath barely perceptible synth quivers. It’s a charming but unrelentingly intense analysis of loss and regret that doesn’t ever forget the humanity and warmth of its subject.
—boomkat.com
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Selfishly speaking, one of the things that hit a nerve when, last year, I heard of the passing of Steve Roden (born, like this writer, in 1964) was to learn that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s. A disease that – mentally, and somewhat erroneously – is typically associated with a state of advancing old age. I unconsciously connected this information to some minor défaillances encountered in recent years that, truth be told, annoy yours truly not a little, considering my disciplined lifestyle.
Thus I found extremely relevant the pairing, proposed by Richard Chartier in the liner notes of On Leaving, of the worsening shape of Roden who slowly “slipped away from communication”, and his renowned propensity to seize the details, albeit minute, of whatever lies in the sonic interspace. Especially the supposedly “mundane” sounds, containing within themselves cues and codes for the comprehension of processes and phenomena that elude the conventional intellect. Beyond physiological issues, a proportionality may exist between the incremental transformation of musically endowed human beings into the very sounds they pick up, and the corresponding progressive relinquishment of the corporeal quotidian, coupled with a realization of the ineffectiveness of spoken transmission.
It’s a suggestion that grows more compelling as one navigates the five “Variances” that constitute this release, superb exemplifications of Chartier’s perceptual and compositional sensibility. A prolonged exposure to mesmerizing repetition is enhanced by minimal matters rich in cryptic repercussions. The acoustic surfaces can appear nearly seamless, but they’re still hiding a wealth of pulsating components and dynamic nuances. They can only be caught in complete stillness or, as suggested, using headphones (and, the reviewer adds, they must be of a high quality). The listener’s reluctance to determine the source of this beauty has always been part of the equation with Chartier’s output. It is a condition that should be respected at all times.
On the other hand, a limitative definition of what resounds in our kernel represents the futile attempt by deluded individuals to grasp universal laws that would work with or without silly anthropocentric pretensions. Chartier’s audio art – and the same was true of Roden’s – is expressed via the scanning of an awareness-charged silence, uniquely rippled by currents of echoing wisdom. It is the reason why we’re here, all the more inwardly driven, headed toward a purpose in which the word “physicality” acquires its proper connotation exclusively through the resonance of vibrating particles.
—Touching Extremes, IT
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Music opens up spaces of sound, provides us with a refuge from the chaos of everyday life, where we can organize our thoughts and draw up plans, even utopias. The new album by sound artist and composer Richard Chartier, who has worked in the past with William Basinski, AGF and Cosey Fanni Tutti, among others, will be released on the British label Touch, home to many visual musicians. Chartier has always freed himself from the prevailing attributive and adjectival expectations of music by understanding his music not as a dialog with the outside world per se, but as an introspective questioning of what it does to sounds when they are oriented towards themselves. These are minimalist compositions whose static hardly vibrates and whose timbres change only slowly.
On Leaving is an album in five acts, on which Chartier, coming from an intensive dialog with his friend Steve Roden, who died of Alzheimer’s disease in the course of production, deals intensively with the presence and absence of sound sources and sounds, drawing our attention to the endless level of micro-sound particles, including (seemingly) soundless passages hidden in the depths of his music. A music that, contrary to all these rather abstract explanations, sounds seductively warm and inviting.
—stadtrevue.de
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Richard Chartier is the gentleman behind the Los Angeles-based LINE label and Pincourtesyphone alias. With five-part work On Leaving he brings his minimalist sound art to the Touch label giving us yet another absolute masterclass in less is more, with a soundworld that shifts and moves ever so delicately as it gently unfolds with subtle movement, patience and nuance. Spellbinding deep listening dedicated to the late Steve Roden.
—normanrecords.com
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an excellent album comprised of subtle, minimal, old-school drone pieces dedicated to the late Steve Roden. “Variance.1” begins as a light noise whir accompanied by glitchy, reverberant clicks. Gradually an oscillating two-tone pattern, run through a sort of flange effect, is added—hearkening back to music from the original peak of drone music, before the turn of the millennium. “Meshing questions of stasis, pulse and timbre,” as the press-release states accurately.
“Variance.3” starts with a lower-pitched murmur. Washes of noise, in soothing cycles, are mixed with this low drone. The track is calming both in that the humming sounds are consistent and cycle with some regularity. The volume increases throughout, and about halfway through, a sense of progression is suggested by the appearance of a higher-pitched tone.
“Variance.4” also begins with a deep, steady vibration. Listening more carefully, we begin to notice subtle, higher harmonics. A deeper oscillation cycle is brought forward, throwing the static nature of the drone in question. Tonal phrases are combined, resulting in a humming pulse. The track ends with a graceful, slow fade.
Overall, On Leaving contains a set of vintage variances, soothing drone tracks that are in ways abstract yet deceptively organic in nature. Minimal composition together with low pitches and recursive sets of sound contribute to this soothing effect.
—igloomag.com
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Of course, Richard Chartier and Pinkcourtesyphone are the same person – but there is a distinct difference in the music released under these names. As Pinkcourtesyphone, Chartier presents a somewhat ‘tongue-in-cheek’ side of music, more emotional, with perhaps some slightly ‘campy’ themes. Or, as Chartier himself says: ‘more musical’. But Pinkcouresyphone’s output should be taken as seriously as the work released under his own name – which is a sound art more minimal, spatial, and abstract perhaps.
With these two (almost simultaneously released) new albums the differences (as well as the similarities) can easily be explored.
On Leaving is dedicated to Steve Roden, who died in 2023, suffering from Alzheimer: “Steve saw and heard everything between the noise, no matter how faint”.
“I worked on the compositions included on this album as Steve gradually slipped away from communication. He was not in my life like he had been before. […] on listening… on loss… on leaving…”
With this background in mind, the five variances get a dark touch, but in itself, the music is free of such emotional value. It is also intensely quiet and peaceful. The ‘implied silence, finely structured and in some cases cyclical’ requires listening at low volumes or on headphones. One question remains, however: ‘What would Steve hear in the details’?
—ambientblog.net
