On realising that he recorded much of his material in the kitchen, Xavier Charles decided to take his music to the next stage by incorporating the ambience of the appliances and elements of said kitchen into the material itself and bringing them to the fore. The three clarinet pieces on the album are accompanied by a brace of pieces produced simultaneously, with the montage work of ‘Hétérogène’ and the aural floor-sweepings of the sessions, ‘Matériel’.
So, what do 12 clarinets in a fridge sound like exactly? Sonorous, eerie, rather like whale song, ethereal drones of immense duration. Clicks, echoing around a cavernous cathedral. Scrapes. Distant fizzes of static. Rumbles and hums, way, way off. Skittering scrabbling sounds, tweets, flickers and creaks. High-pitched whistles. Scratchy, wild, bobbing anti-jazz effusions bubble through ’10 Clarinets in a Washing Machine’, the first track to feature anything even closely resembling a recognisable clarinet sound. The clarinets sound a call of panic before the spin cycle kicks in and then finally, they’re silenced as the drum reaches warp speed. ‘6 Clarinets in a Boiler’ mew mournfully, no doubt as they dry out or slowly melt into silence.
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