Laps Init 1.0
for five amplified acoustic instruments and two laptops (2013 - 12 min.)
Designed for LAPS (Laptop and acoustic production system), an ensemble created in 2013 by the composer and the members of the Laptop Duo KNAPP (Gilles Doneux and Gilles Gobert), Laps Init fonctions as an echo of Zap's Init (2008), a tribute to Franck Zappa shaped as a "spectral Rock" for electric guitar. If the sound of this instrument introduces the new iconic piece, the laptop is gradually becoming here a point of departure of a canvas stretched over the line that separates popular music and contemporary music. This time there is less references to "Progressive Rock", but the musical articulation attempts to link the writing of the listening of the timbre (and not the writing of the timbre itself !) - via sampling - to the rhythmical temptations of the RnB, Trip hop or the saturations of Death Metal. However, how to write music without the peculiar "beat" of these styles, although it underlies all sections ? The allusion here is provided by the laptops, with some percussive samples stemming from distorted voice sounds, modelized by acoustic instruments through vocal references (occlusives and fricatives). The temporal processing is thus left to the iteration and the metamorphosis of sound sentences. Furthermore, many loops proposes asymmetric variants as a permanent principle.
Then, Laps Init is at the heart of a "crossing" process at the intersection of acoustics and technology, voice and instrumental references, morphemes versus phonemes, from the breath to the white noise, and a big mix of all through the cross-synthesis. Music lovers will also discorver few historical hints, as the baroque "lamento" (a recurring item in my music) joined by specific idioms of the involved instruments. Because the work is primarily written in thinking about its musicians, a vibration arose from the desire to share the spirit of the original and individual in order to demonstrate that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Laps Init 1.0 is dedicated to the musicians of LAPS (Doneux Gilles and Gilles Gobert, Laptops / Nao Momitani, piano / Dejana Sekulic, violin / Jeremie Ninove, cello / Rudy Mathey, clarinet - bass clarinet / Nicolas Villers, trombone), an ensemble which, under the direction of the composer, premiered the work within the Ars Musica Festival 2013.
Claude LEDOUX