"Quiet, quiet, don't breathe! I've started disc by Richard Chartier" - such words one can say listening in a company of people to one of the albums of this American. If you don't get rid of outside sounds it can be so that you just don't hear the music. That is the peculiarity of Chartier - work on the merge of audibility, very often it seems that he rules not sound but silence with the help of sounds, he modifies and transforms natural silence, paints it with different colors and makes different forms.The new album of this unique sound artist was released in May 2009 on the Austrian label Non Visual Objects and represents stereo composition based on joint project Untitled by Chartier and Linn Meyers who worked with visual images. The centre of this installation were two big walls making an angle, their surfaces were skillfully got up by vortexes of thin, pale lines. Under the surface were hidden 8 loudspeakers producing sound loops. One can imagine that in this musical release those walls' cover is identically with formed cardboard envelope covering the compact disc. Having waited for several minutes after the start you can hear the first fragile sound trickles, like the thinnest cobweb thread. Further there will be more such threads - they will form layers one over the next one, cross and disappear for some time. Each thread with its spectral structure and picture of amplitude change. Drones, rippling, squeak splashes... I imagine some moments as shy, uncertain communication with silence - it's specialty style of Richard Chartier which constantly surprises me, and Untitled (angle.1) is a perfect continuation of his interesting creativity.
- Richard Chartier
- Non Visual Objects