I remember reviewing a Johnny Ramone solo record right after the punk paragon had died, but I’ve never been working on a review only to see the artist who created its subject pass on before it’s done. It’s lent a sense of heightened purpose to my evaluation, I must admit. Not because I had previously expected Bernard Parmegiani to read what I am about to write or because knowing that its author is no longer with us will alter my opinion of De Natura Sonorum; it’s just that it’s humbling to know an artist as crippled by talent as Parmegiani came and went so peacefully, with an admiring core of underground admirers, sure, but relatively few who realize the true scope of his genius. Now’s the time for those of us who haven’t caught on yet to listen in.
His time in French television and jingle-making notwithstanding, Parmegiani’s dread-inducing, nail-biting, tension-building ways are represented on this double-LP set. His greatest ally, as with many of the artists fronted by Recollection GRM (not to mention those filling the stable over at Editions RZ), is silence. He uses it to lure the listener into a spider-bite coma before dropping ear-splitting THUMPs and electric spikes down your neck. This isn’t anything like a lot of the music frequenting people’s headphones these days. You can’t count on anything; even expecting the unexpected will leave you open to surprises of the best kind, but they also come as a jolt to the senses that might seem to be devoid of pleasure until you pick up on the greater-good idea he’s been cultivating.
The methods he uses to conjure his compositions seem almost tortuously novel, such as when he “places together various sounds produced by ‘touching’ elastic or instrumental skins or vibrating strings and a number of instrumentalgestures close to this touch, using electronic processes to create white noise, and”… well, you get the idea just from that section of the jacket notes, right? Parmegiani went to great lengths to ensure his albums contained structures that could never be duplicated, and it’s strange to me that so many of us don’t expect that of many of our favorite artists these days. That’s why his work holds up today and will in 50 years when Recollection GRM Version 2.0 hyperloads its deluxe reissue into your mindpod. But why wait till then?
