Richard Comte is a guitarist composer and producer active in the improvised music scene since 2005. He employs contemporary music compositional concepts and free improvisation processes combined with noise rock energy and sounds. His guitar playing is focused on the sonic possibilities of his instrument, he uses resonances and textures created by prepared guitar, analogue treatments and a custom sound diffusion system. He is a sonic sculptor, drawing timeless spaces – from loud immersive drones to spacious resonances bordering on silence itself. His work is a powerful and very personal sensory sound experience. He is a co-founder of the bands Hippie Diktat, Roue Libre, Vegan Dallas and he is part of bands such as AUM Grand Ensemble, Simon H Fell’s ensembles SFQ and SFS, PoulainJars in addition to playing in many improv shows.
Nunc is an independent label dedicated to liberated, open music, centred around the experience of sound in the moment; a free space for research and collaboration.
http://nunc-nunc.com/
à nos fenêtres | Richard Comte | NUNC. (bandcamp.com)
à nos fenêtres by Richard Comte, NUNC, 2022 on #neuguitars #blog #RichardComte #NUNC
At the beginning of May 2020, in the last days of the first lockdown, I responded to the invitation of Manon Welfringer and Arnaud Guerry for a live broadcast on Radio PiNode. I didn’t like the idea of not being in contact with the listeners, of playing without sharing the same sound space, so I decided to write and record a piece, in a few days, on the sound environment which I had experienced during these months of confinement. I started by writing a piano part in the form of a resonant harmonic framework, one could say vibratory, which somehow carries the DNA of the piece and gives it its shape. I recorded it on Friday, May 8 at 7:10 p.m. in my living room which is at the corner of two streets, an open window on each of them, and a microphone at each window. I had all the minute details of the exterior sound in my headphones, with a window in each ear. I played the piano part live by interacting with the environment or rather the sound material that came from the street. We hear activity resume and with it the noise pollution, the oppression of motors, as if no lesson had been learned from the ordeal we had just gone through. In the last part of the piece, we hear the 8pm applause, now tired, lacklustre. A moment which was emptied of its meaning as much as of its participants. Every evening, my neighbors like take advantage of this space to chant libertarian slogans at their windows, very courageously. Including them in the piece was an opportunity to pay homage to them. The next day, I returned to the studio, then installed in the other room of my apartment, and locked myself there for the whole of the following day. I replayed the soundscape more than ten times, each time with a different guitar, a new sound, over the entire piece. I then wove in colors on the frame of the piano, orchestrating somehow the sound of the street and that moment of Friday evening. I edited on Sunday, mixed on Monday and sent the piece to the radio on Tuesday morning after a final listen. Testimony of a moment, this piece is also a manifesto on how to perceive our environment, to make it musical, to bring out the poetry
of things by our way of listening, of seeing, as if it were the only thing that was left for us to do.
credits
released April 8, 2022
Richard Comte : composition, piano, electric and acoustic guitars, field recording
Recorded, Mixed and Mastered by Richard Comte in May 2020
Graphic design by Studio Punkat
Photo by Sara Naviganti
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