Are fishes nihilist? (all this is not realistic)
D’INCISE

(Kaon 2012)

Review by John McEnroe

There is an interesting text written by D’Incise Feraille on the booklet where he talks about the difficulties he faced while working with Cédric Peyronnet’s recordings of the Taurion river. He writes that he needed to create a certain distance between him and the subject, the river, to finally give form to the project.

D’Incise work is closer to the electroacoustic line of work and this probably helped making this project particularly interesting as most of the previous ‘river’ series on Kaon were rather phonographic or concrete.

The question ‘are fishes nihilist?’ brings to the table loads of aspects that has been largely discussed within the sound art context in regard on the universal and specific sense. On existential nihilism the universal sense can be so large and overwhelming that the parts that compose this universe could seem insignificant and without any transcendence.

In regard of this release I’d like to ask a question: What is the river? My speculative answer to that is that river is all that makes a river a river without the river.

The ‘river’ is just some sort of image or notion on the artist’s perception that he formally develops within the relation he establishes between his sensible experience and his duties as crafter of sound compositions.

The distance that that the artist created with the subject was there when the project first started whether on Cédric Peyronnet or on D’Incise Feraille’s side. This because the artist seems to be more interested on the formal aspect of things than on the ‘things’ themselves.

On ‘Are fishes nihilist?’ the river is there: the listener can hear the textures, the movement, the flow, the change, he can hear what makes a river a river without the river which at the end is one of the ultimate stances of the artistic creation. This alone makes this release highly effective and successful. Now add to that the rewarding emotional experience that the listener can found through the 23 minutes the piece lasts. The composition work here in its formal value is highly compelling as all the aspects were properly taken care of: timing, shaping, texturing…everything works here as all matters were dealt with very unique and strong sensibility, imagination and emotionality.

This release adds to an accomplished year of very rewarding works by  D’Incise Feraille, all of them presenting a very particular sense and direction, and most of them pertinently reviewed by this journal.

[D’Incise, photo courtesy of Last FM]

D’Incise website
Kaon website