four questions # 10: Emmanuel Mieville

Emmanuel is a French composer & phonographer. His latest release is 'Dispositif: Canal Saint-Martin' (xing wu records) - this collaboration with Eric Cordier features the sounds of the Centre d'animation Jemmapes building in Paris, composed in real time from 30 microphones placed around the site along with a few sounds captured in Normandy & Emmanuel's unsettling synthesizer interruptions - an element that I found difficult a first but can also be heard as a way for the focus of the listener to be occasionally disrupted and re-established.

JrF: when & why did you become interested in field recording ?

EM: I started to do soundtakes during my sound engineer studies but became really interested in field recordings many years later, after a major aesthetic turn in my composer’s practice. My first approach to music was done with synthesis, samples and midi keyboards, when I was learning at the GRM (groupe de rechereches musicales). After a 6 years interruption due to personal problems, I started to compose again, my focus had drifted far from the former musical sources, and I began to get involved in field recording and objects, towards concrete music in its utmost historical concept. Besides, my travels to non European countries and meeting with other cultures and instruments modified to a great extent my music thinking.

JrF: how do you use your field recordings in your own artistic output ?

EM: I have a deep interest in the site’s topology, and the events disclosed during the recordings, which i’m trying to render in the music output, either with raw or treated sounds. The narrative component-if any- in the soundtake is not regarded as anecdotal material, but as memory collection, yielding a cohesive stimulation for my composing imagination. Nevertheless, there is no strict rule or methodology, and external materials can influence afterwards the work on the field recordings and disrupt the consistency of the initial material recorded.

JrF: do you regard 'natural' sounds as a musical element (bearing in mind that the conventional definition of 'music' is rapidly becoming obsolete) or as sound ? is this definition important ? does it matter ?

HM: 'Natural sounds' are undertaken as musical elements, but their definition is not relevant in my composer’s approach, for instance, working for radiophonic documentaries and using these 'natural sounds' is not considered as musical output, but it is for me. I want to blur all boundaries between sound sources, and not attach myself to definitions or constraints, unless they are creative, or issued from a specific commission.

JrF: has the act of making field recording had an effect (positive or negative) on the way you listen to your everyday surroundings and how has it affected the way you listen to other music and sound (if at all) ?

HM: No, I was sensitive to the sound surroundings since my childhood. I had no classical instrumental and solfegic learning in conservatories (except for a short and undisciplined piano practice), but on the other hand I was exposed to all kinds of music styles, among them musique concrète or ethnic musicians. For example, I listened to Pierre Henry’s first pieces at the age of 10, and it developed this fluid aural perception of sounds and music, with no hierarchy whatsoever.
The 'negative' notion of this perception is that I tend to emphasize or dismiss sounds that are normally unnoticed in Paris life.

May 2008