The Narrows

U09 | Joda Clément | The Narrows

format : CD ltd to 200 hand numbered copies
release year : 2011
length : 35’13

Available now from Unfathomless (sound samples online)

>>> order via Paypal : chalkdc@unfathomless.net

(Europe) : 14 € (inc.postage)

(World) : 15 € (inc.postage)

Interview online

15 Questions to Joda Clément

“Many artists on the sound art scene will try to get their work out as quickly as possible in a bid of staying „contemporary“, „up to date“ and „relevant“. To sound artist and composer Joda Clément, contrarily, time is a quality seal and a musical aspect of a recording – baked into its structure, as it were, like a genetic fingerprint or watermark….

…Suitably, he has only now returned the interview I sent him all the way back in 2006, years late on the one hand, yet perfectly on time on the other: Although this period might seem like an eternity in a business all too often in love with with novelty in a bid of trying to stay contemporary, Joda’s replies don’t sound irrelevant or out of date one bit. We may be living in busy times, but sometimes, things really do seem to come to those willing to wait.” — Tobias Fischer, Tokafi

Upcoming releases, concert series

Two projects I’ve been working on will be released this year: first is a new solo album, coming out on Unfathomless (Mystery Sea’s sister label). It’s a new composition that I’ve been working on since 2005, very dense. Title TBA.

The other release is a trio improv project, recorded in Toronto and Montreal this past November, with percussionist Jeffrey Allport and Chandan Narayan, who plays autoharp + swarmandal. Presently mastering and preparing for a vinyl release, on Chandan’s Simple Geometry label.

I’m also curating an ongoing monthly concert of experimental music in Toronto with Chandan, called Eminent Domain, which currently takes place at Somewhere There studio. If granted funding, which we just applied for, we’ll be moving the series to Mercer Union, a beautiful gallery space in Bloordale village. Check our blog for info.

Trio

During November 2010 I had a chance to re-connect with Vancouver based percussionist Jeffrey Allport, who was visiting Toronto because his girlfriend Kara Uzelman had a residency at the Mercer Union gallery.  Joined by our mutual friend Chandan Narayan, we formed an ad hoc trio and made the most of the opportunity to perform and record together, including concerts in Toronto, Montreal and a special sound performance integrated within Kara’s installation at Mercer Union.

We’re currently sorting through the rest of our recordings, but I anticipate that we will compile and hopefully release some of this material this year.

Another pic below…

Fall 2010 events

November 20, 2010 – Toronto

Eminent Domain a monthly concert series of experimental music and electro-acoustic improvisation

Joda Clément/ Chandan Narayan /Jeff Allport + guests

M-DO – 355 College St., 2nd Floor

7pm -11pm

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November 27, 2010 – Montreal

Joda Clément/ Chandan Narayan /Jeffrey Allport
Tomasz Krakowiak / Steve McFarland
Black Soul (Jon Boles + Chris Strickland)

Interstice, 242 Young
21h30 / 9:30 pm

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ONE HOUR EMPIRE Issue 3 feature

ONE HOUR EMPIRE offers a survey of contemporary culture featuring the arts, design, current affairs and more.

Issue 3 features exclusive photographs and writing related to the Cherry Beach Project installation from Empire of Dreams at the the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, biennial celebration of artists living in Toronto.

EMPIRE OF DREAMS Issue 3 is now available from the following stockists:

Summer Activity 2010

Suoni Per Il Popolo Festival:

June 15, 2010 – La Sala Rossa – Montreal

Natura Sonoris (Magali Babin, Myléna Bergeron, & Karl Lemieux)

+ Steve Bates

+ Joda Clément

8:30PM

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Empire of Dreams
Phenomenology of the built environment
Contemporary artists from Toronto
Curated by David Liss

June 19 – August 15, 2010 – MOCCA – Toronto

Opening reception: June 19, 7 – 11 p.m.

Features an audio/visual installation by Joda Clément and Nigel Craig, based on the Cherry Beach Project

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Electric Eclectics 5

July 31-August 1, 2010 – Meaford, Ontario

Festival of experimental music and sound art

Full program: http://www.electric-eclectics.com/

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reheat 2010
Saturday, 21.8.2010 – Austria

Multi-disciplinary Festival at Kleylehof (Nickelsdorf / Burgenland / Austria)

‘no one is there’ – duet recording

The good people at  compost and height have featured this recent duet recording on their site:

Joda Clément – MS20 Synthesiser, Field Recordings
Tomasz Krakowiak – Percussion

Recorded at live at Somewhere There, Toronto, January 3rd 2010

Global Ear: Toronto, Bridge Music

My performance at the Prince Edward Viaduct is featured in the Global Ear: Toronto piece in the December ’08 issue of The Wire , by Daniel Neilson, excerpts below:

‘The Extermination Music Night (EMN) is part of a growing experimental music scene that has taken to the streets, to disused industrial sites, residential houses and public parks for its fruition. While Toronto’s traditional arts spaces are far from conservative, this movement is re-examining artistic relationship with the city’s environment, while in turn absorbing its urbanity…

…It is exactly the kind of urban environment and situational melding that appeals to the night’s first performer Joda Clément, an ambient recordist and arranger. For his (2006) piece Cherry Beach Project (reviewed in The Wire 278) Clément documented two nights in an abandoned and toxic industrial ruins, frequented by Toronto’s underclass and corrupt cops…

Cherry Beach Project exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art

Exclusive recordings and photography from the source material and site of the Cherry Beach Project, an installation for the the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art’s biennial celebration of artists living in Toronto.

Empire of Dreams
Phenomenology of the built environment
Contemporary artists from Toronto
Curated by David Liss

June 19 – August 15, 2010

Musicworks #105: interview + compilation CD

Musicworks #105 Winter 2009

Interview for an article on Extermination Music Night, a summertime live music series where shows take place in the most unusual of venues: abandoned buildings, under bridges and in the woods; areas not typically associated with music performance; interview details two projects I contributed to Extermination Music Night in 2009.

Compilation CD included with the magazine features a track from The Cherry Beach Project (which is now sold out from Mystery Sea)

<—- performing ‘Bridge Music’ at Extermination Music Night X (for amplified bridge)

OSTINATO Limited Edition CDrs

OSTINATO 11 Limited Edition CDr

1 Freida Abtan vs Joda Clement – Untitled 28:29
2 Anonymous – Untitled 12:17
2 Kolumkilli vs Aidan Baker – Untitled 10:13
3 Gyges vs Vromb – Untitled 22:32

Recorded live at Inter_act 2
MUTEK 2006, Montreal, Québec June 2, 2006
Curator: Eric Mattson

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OSTINATO 20 Limited Edition CDr

1 Joda Clément – For Henri Michaux 14:59
2 Alexandre St-Onge – Joseph Carey Merrick 19:39
3 Freida Abtan – Orpheus 19:15
4 Erin Sexton – Homer & Steina Vasulka 15:06

Recorded at Epoxy 3
Sala Rossa, Montreal, Quebec May 2, 2007
Curator: Eric Mattson

Ostinatos: series of thirty works by artist Jérôme Fortin and limited edition of thirty CDrs, thirty copies each, containing live recordings from concerts produced by curator Eric Mattson.

Comes on a carbon CDr with info insert and two two-color artprints, one of which is hand-numbered and signed by the artist.

Available from Oral Records

CHERRY BEACH PROJECT ‘SILO 11′ CD

Cherry Beach Project “silo 11″ ( MS35 )

“Cherry Beach is located at the end of a small, artificially created peninsula on which various heavy industrial facilities and toxic no-man’s lands decay. The area is infamous as a site out of public sight for police to engage in ‘off the record’ activities. Our location was within a complex of vacant waste oil storage facilities on Cherry Beach. While recording on the night of June 5th, 2004, we were forced to abandon our equipment after discerning that violent activities were taking place in one of the seemingly abandoned structures nearby. We returned at dawn to retrieve our equipment, which we were able to do successfully, only to be pursued out of the area and down the beach by two unidentified men. Fortunately we escaped unharmed, with our recordings intact. Since this time the entire compound and all of its reverberant structures have been demolished, leaving only an empty lot. The material presented here has been selected from two days of recording on site, but otherwise left untreated and unprocessed.”

- Joda Clément/Nigel Craig, November 2006

Sold out from Mystery Sea

REVIEWS:

THE WIRE # 278 – Outer Limits | Jim Haynes
Cherry Beach is located in a lakefront region of Toronto that had once been a heavily utilised industrial zone. When the area was abandoned and left to

MOVEMENT + REST CD

“Movement + Rest is the result of two years work listening, collecting and arranging sound. My recordings attempt to blur the distinction between electronic, acoustic and ambient sources. Analog or acoustic instruments are used because of the direct physical process with which they generate sound. I take field recordings from sounds that habitually go unnoticed in the daily environment (airplanes overhead, trains passing in the night, the broken radiator at the end of the hall, falling snow), as well as those which are less accessible for hearing (the abandoned subway tunnels of Toronto, a muffled cab ride through Guadalajara, contact mics on Jacques Cartier Bridge, etc.). I combine nondescript omnipresent noises that surround us with instrumental and vocal recordings to create a landscape of sounds that unites the properties of both musical and everyday contexts”. -JODA CLÉMENT

Order on-line at Alluvial Recordings $8.00 p.p. in North America, elsewhere $10.00.

REVIEWS:
VITAL WEEKLY 489 (Frans de Waard)
Somehow Alluvial knows where to find young and exciting and above all serious composers.