Lionel Marchetti - Portrait d'un Glacier (Alpes 2173m) (2001)

"Some of the best concrète, environmental works you could hear, weaved location recordings I guess from the Alpes, adorned with sound sources that come from far away to the left or right occasionally. You are always traveling, there's always movement, seamlessly, calmly, not sudden switches of environment, but a steady flow of change and new characterization. I like the use of one time sounds that don't get repeated. You want to click back and hear it again but then some other current scenario is making your mind work by then. These works are great, not since some of the best Eric La Casa or the Liminality comp have I been transported so completely. The wind, the crunch of snow underfoot, the bent branches left behind, the far away hail of a fellow trekker." ~ Manifold Records

Lionel Marchetti has blended field recordings with electronic drones and other sounds to create an incredibly dramatic recording. Recorded on the Glacier de Tré-la tête on Mont-Blanc, in France, at an altitude of 2173 meters we hear low rumbles, creaking, water splashing and sounds of footsteps crunching the icy surface all appearing out of the silence. Voices in the distance...a small propeller rescue plane overhead?

"Portrait d'un Glacier is a Series I release which puts it in Ground Fault's quiet category. While most of the CD is relatively quiet, there are moments at the middle when things get a little nerve wracking. It's very cold, dark and dramatic.

This is one of those CDs that are great to drift asleep to in a darkened room only to be awaken by the sudden "events" that occasionally happen.

"I used to hike mountains, (the Alpes), and the first time I descovered the Glacier "Tré-la tête", on Mont-Blanc, in France, with my friend Bruno Roche, I realized that we met a strange "vivacity". This glacier is coverd with stones, on 5 "kilometres" at less. It's a sort of desert where it's possible to see, on the floor, near our feet, a strange blue eye looking at us, saying : - do you want to know more about my face ?"...

In "Portrait d'un glacier (Alpes, 2173m)", I tried to find beauty of the mountain when it is able to give us an incredible geomorphic entity as the glacier; I tried to represent the breath of who is walking in a such beauty, dealing, in that way, with more than only his human condition - "the most difficult area"; but without forgetting this idea of "panic" I can feel that the mountain is danger too, an archaism I can feel under my feet, and sometimes could destruct me only with a breath..." Lionel Marchetti

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Glacier de Tré-la tête (2173m)

Ce matin, réveillé vers cinq heures

couleurs métalliques et vertes
lumière, force
tournoiement de l'esprit projeté
psychisme, sécrétion
lente humeur animale

soudain sonore

aurore en montagne

intelligence.

L.M.

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Track 1 - Portrait d'un Glacier (Alpes 2173m)..........28'40"

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