"in general, I try to distinguish between what one calls the future and l'avenir. the future is that which - tomorrow, later, next century - will be. there is a future which is predictable, programmed, scheduled, foreseeable. but there is a future, l'avenir (to come) which refers to someone who comes whose arrival is totally unexpected. for me. that is the real future. that which is totally unpredictable. the other who comes without my being able to anticipate their arrival. so if there is a real future beyond this other known future, it's l'avenir in that it's the coming of the other when i'm completely unable to foresee their arrival."

Jacques Derrida

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Reviews:

Future Tense (July 2008): In keeping with the title’s reference to the future-as-planned versus the future-as-uncertainty, Richard Garet’s l’avenir strikes a compelling balance between a composer’s control over the unfolding of a kind of Grand Narrative, and an unsettling drift that refuses to resolve into a standard form, scale or reasoning. This tension presents itself most often as a kind of delicious free-floating dread that runs throughout the single long piece, allowing the interplay of tones that comprises its midsection to be genuinely beautiful without a hint of prettiness. Perhaps, then, this is a piece about expectation, for there is never a doubt in this listener’s mind that the piece is developing along a firm declarative line of intent; however that line remains occluded, withdrawn from view to an extent that transitions can be genuinely startling, but are never disjunctive.

Beginning in a field of pointilistic textures that brings to mind both Günter’s “Red Shift” and Xenakis’ “Concrete PH”, l’avenir develops a delicate interplay of tonal structures, bodies of sound that move together and abraid in an oceanic middle ground between organic environment and dramatic composition. The feeling is of a world slowly cohering, pulling equally from the poles of a fragmentary chaos and from the stillness of silence. In a wonderful denouement, this process seems to reverse and we are witness to a steady erosion, as if the surfaces that were under construction previously in the piece were now being methodically worn away by a solvent or acid, until all that is left are the digital underpinnings that support all modern audio.

A very welcome addition to Winds Measure’s already consistently outstanding offerings, l’avenir is a work that truly approaches the qualities of the sublime. -- Andy Graydon

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White Line (October 2008): Housed in an elegant and highly reduced white cover with grey text, Richard Garet once again graces Winds Measure with it’s 12th release, “l’avenir”. This is sound pared down to its barest components, stark and deeply reminiscent (in places) of Bernhard Gunther’s classic Un Peu De Neige Salie more than a decade ago. Garet here majestically represents a new wave of what I have recently dubbed “quietism” that includes artists such as Richard Chartier, Shinkei, Roel Meelkop, Steinbrüchel, Luigi Turra, (could I be cheeky enough to include myself?), and others, who boldly explore ultra-minimalist territory in new and astonishing ways. Taking as it’s theme and influence a fragment of text by po-mo’s token philosophy guru, Jacques Derrida (there is a postcard with the text included here) that locates itself in the unpredictable future. Garet picks up this theme as a conceptual hook, and explores shady reminiscences, glistening fragments of sound that emerge from total silence. These unpredictable moments of activity are what I presume became the fuel that ignited the sound work “l’avenir”. What emerges is perhaps one of the finest examples of quietism that I have heard, as Garet masterfully engenders luscious swathes of warm tonality amongst a thick fog of silence, occasionally peppered with delicate, evanescent activities. The work is carefully crafted, and not unlike his most logical contemporary, Steinbrüchel, Garet also tempers the pace of his work, rendering it almost surreal in places, with the listener eagerly anticipating the next field of activity. Doubtless, you have picked up on my sheer joy at hearing this recording, and my recommendation to listen to “l’avenir” can come no higher than this. I am enthused and entranced. -- BGN

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Touching Extremes (September 2008): The difference between the future and “l’avenir”, according to Jacques Derrida, lies in the almost planned predictability of the former as opposed to the eventual unexpectedness of the latter. For Richard Garet, the concept “played a significant role in scoring the work from a subjective and intuitive perspective”. The composition was “constructed” in 2006 and 2007, no information given about its generation, although we can assume that laptop-processed found sounds and some kind of complex synthesis might have been used. The results are not too far away from the aesthetic vision of another Richard (Chartier), maintaining a general stillness often adjoining silence. Everything starts with a few minutes of softly rustling secretions, after which we’re initiated to the first layers of temperate electronic drones which take only a short moment to start diffusing all around our body, a little bit of holographic sonic architecture whose vibrational power is fair but firm. The beneficial effect of this mild-mannered rubbing is instantaneous, as one experiences that sense of fitting in the immediate environment that masterful soundscapers are able to elicit. Garet shows that he belongs, both in the above mentioned background and the upper echelon of contemporary sound artists, his music both a considerable means for vanquishing the gravitational pull and the key to reach a state of respite of the nerves. -- Massimo Ricci

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Earlabs (September 2008): Almost a year in the making, the sounds that rather unexpectedly came together to form Richard Garet's l'avenir were originally the pre-prepared audio accompaniment to a performance installation involving live video processsing that took place in November 2006. 


New York City-based Richard Garet is a sound/video artist and painter. His work is focused on “the phenomena found and produced in aural and visual time-based media, in nature’s processes, and human beings' relationship with both artificial and natural environments.“ His steadily expanding discography includes his solo CD release Intrinsic Motion (NVO, 2006) and several collaborative works [EA - Balancing Act with Controlled Dynamics: Take Two (Conv, 2008) ; Territorium - with Dale Lloyd, Jos Smolders, and Ubeboet (NVO, 2005)] and compilation appearances [Extract: Portraits of Sound Artists (NVO, 2007)] Armed with the idea of the "need to make a composition in which the listener would just get lost in it," L'avenir arose from a multiple-layered blend of digitally collected and processed electro-acoustic and synthetic sounds. Richard described for me via email the interesting origins/background of this composition which is quoted in part below:

In November 2006 I did a performance installation at LMAK Project gallery in Chelsea, NYC, with sounds collected during August, September, and October of 2006, that consisted of a sonic field focused on the same pitch but with different timbre or color tone. The piece was presented through 4 devices and each device was in shuffle-mode so all the sounds were coming in and out and the piece was being constructed randomly and always going somewhere. While the aural experience was taking shape I was doing live video processing. When I perform live if I play with both visual and audio I usually pre-prepare one and I interact with the other live and in that case I chose sound to be the pre-prepared material. So after the performance I really liked the way the sound played its role. Initially the sound was supposed to just accompany the video and nothing else but then since I really liked the result I decided to keep working on it and make a composition from that material. These were the sounds that I used in L’avenir. The sources were mainly field recordings with texture and pitchy like characteristics processed until pitch is all you hear.

L’avenir is a composition of three parts: Part I (0 - 4:01) commences with a very distinctive barely audible staccato pitter-patter (which reminds me of the percussive sound of a light rain striking a metal surface). Part I effortlessly transitions into Part II (4:02 - 40:10) which [but for a rather surprising and abrasive interlude (11:59 - 12:49)] is a lengthy stretch of beautiful experiments in tonal flux. It’s the dynamic and unpredictable interplay between various layers of tones in this segment that promote a feeling of being lost. Part III (40:11 - 49:00) brings L’avenir to tenuous conclusion with a divergent segment of fragile minimalism with hazy drones and brittle scratchiness. One of the most notable aspects of L’avenir is the elegant way that it gradually unfolds during the course of its 49-minute duration. A blend of purposeful composition balanced with an equal portion of randomness creates a slightly tense ambiance by juxtaposing the predictable with the unforeseen. Also contributing to this edginess are transitions that are sometimes smooth and barely noticeable and at other times abrupt and startling. L'avenir shows Richard Garet in one of his best creative moments to date and demonstrates just how paradoxically powerful a work of minimal sound art based on a balanced blend of predictability and randomness can be. A very memorable release I think for Winds Measure Recordings. -- Larry Johnson

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Neural (January 2009): After opening the stylish white rectangular cardboard box, reading a subtle quotation – in English – from the philosopher Jacques Derrida about the difference – in his opinion – between ‘the future’ and ‘l’avenir’, there are many puzzling minutes of almost silence. Only by raising the volume of our sound card a great deal we can make out crackles, an imperceptible background noise that turns into overtly minimalist textures, full of pauses and very static drones. Hints of sounds emerging from the silence, a barely sketched auditive non-place. Some people define this trend ‘quietism’, but there’s nothing quiet – as Hitchcock taught us – about a state of anxious wait, here stressed by a precise work of subtraction and fine perceptive tuning. It’s an extreme work, controversial but not without a certain alien appeal: if this is the evanescent future we can’t predict – of course – we cannot tell. -- Aurelio Cianciotta