There’s nothing standard about this super-limited release from Canadian composer, producer and arranger Gabriel Ledoux. There’s an overarching theme and style that provide a sense if unity, and it would be reasonable to describe ‘Le Vide Parfait’ as a concept album in two parts.
The first six tracks are abstract and challenging, the three parts of ‘<> interespersed with ‘(-----) # # # (-----)’, ‘# # # (-----------------)’ and ‘(-------) # # #’ On these tracks, voices announcing ‘I am a violent revolutionary’ build in layers amidst a crazed jazz drum break and a cacophony of noise to create a brain-bending sonic stew by way of an opening to Gabriel Ledoux’s strange and ambitious project. Devastating explosions of noise, fried circuits and overloading speakers smash the moments of tranquillity and contrast with wordless operatic vocals and tense orchestration.
It may not translate in any obvious way to the tracks themselves, but there’s a vague sense of narrative that runs through the remaining six tracks, with <>, <> vibes_etc and <> bookended by ‘Intro; and ‘Finale’.
Tremulous woodwind clashes with brutal scraping guitar. The voices of women that loom from amidst clattering industrial percussion and the bleak sounds of unknown and invisible horror are particularly disturbing. And here’s why: Ledoux is fascinated by killers, and writes of how he was intrigued by mass killings. In particular, this work is inspired by The Waco siege and Columbine massacre, and recordings of calls to 911 made during these events are woven into the fabric of the soundworks.
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The disc also comes with a bilingual (French and English) 60-page booklet entitled ‘Sound Exploitations and Other Living Room Perversions,’ containing essays and short written works by a range of contributors, concluding with a short piece by Ledoux himself outlining his inspiration and qualifying the ‘immoral art’ that so revulsed the examiners of his Master’s submission.
It would be easy to condemn Ledoux for his employment of shock tactics and gratuitous exploitation of horrific events. But that would be a mistake: ‘Le Vide Parfait’ is a worth through which the artist himself wrestles with difficult and contradictory responses which are more common to us than most would readily admit. In tackling the complexities of the way we’re simultaneously drawn to and repulsed by certain things, Ledoux creates vital and challenging art.
Violent and revolutionary indeed.
Gabriel Ledoux – Le Vide Parfait Online
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