MUTEKLIVE128 - Paraphonique

Paraphonique (CA)
Saturday June 4, 2016 - Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MAC)

Mastered by @Pheek

WHO: Canadian producer Nicolas Lavoie, based in the Saguenay-Ottawa-Gatineau region
STYLE: Experimental ambient, analog synth soundscapes, found sounds on old tapes
LATEST WORK: musique de nuit (2015)
LABELS: Low Noise Productions
MORE: For several years, Lavoie played bass in Ottawa rock-shoegaze band Deep Red Meteor

Dynamic rhythms, layers of arpeggios and crushed sounds make up Paraphonique’s cinematic soundtracks to a story always in motion; blurred landscapes as seen from a car window. Primarily using modular analog synths, vintage equipment and choice fragments found on old tapes, Lavoie produces a colourful, malleable palette of sounds ranging from ambient techno to krautrock and electo. Often it’s one of those unique fragments from a tape or a synth experiment or even the ambient noise in his studio that inspires the mood of a track and generates its pulse.

Paraphonique tracks featured on the first two Low Noise Productions cassette compilations in late 2013, not long before the release of the EP La Traversee du Continent, an intriguing blend of space-age electro with the noise turned up and sweeping rhythms. His album, music de nuit followed on the same label – four tracks exploring the title’s multiple meanings, from ... to... Along with officially released tracks, thematic modular jams populate his soundcloud, emotive sonic comments on memories and images, and abstract narratives of being on the road, half-lost between two fixed points.