The fourth album by French composer Pierre-Yves Macé is an exceedingly high-concept affair with very intriguing source material. Passagenweg is inspired by philosopher Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, which was an unfinished attempt to chronicle Parisian industrial modernity. Mace, whose thematic consistency is laudable, constructs this lengthy musique concrete opus largely from crackling gramophone recordings of French popular music from the early twentieth century.
Pierre-Yves Macé has had a fairly atypical career for a contemporary classical composer. Despite his youth (he was born in 1980), he has already released three albums of electro-acoustic ensemble works (his debut album was released by John Zorn's Tzadik) and has opened for decidedly non-classical artists such as Matmos. He is currently working on a PhD in musicology with a specific interest on field recording. I suspect Passagenweg was conceptually birthed during those studies, but it does not seem especially sterile or academic.
The album opens in strange, yet some somewhat promising fashion. "Angelus Novus" gradually fades in with a dull, hobbling snare rhythm that is gradually eclipsed by the engulfing roar of a crackling and wavering sustained chord. Then the chord disappears, leaving a haunting, dreamlike waltz loop in its place.
After that, the album becomes very collage-y and difficult to discern where one track ends and another begins without staring unblinkingly at my CD player. A few tracks stand out as particularly enjoyable and coherent, however. "Il Principe il Ranocchio, 1" sustains a hazy ambience of schmaltzy strings and a churchbell that is intermittently encroached upon by field recordings and an exuberant antique piano recording. Eventually the schmaltzy strings seem to overpower the interloping elements, but then the loop is stretched and mangled before being abruptly cut out altogether. The following track is made up some submerged and seemingly understated glitchery, but then the track after that ("Ranocchio, 2") revisits the same string theme. It is unclear what it all means or how the glitch interlude is related. I suspect it isn't, but perhaps Macé's vision is simply too complex and enigmatic for me to grasp. Later, "Nocturnorama" essentially condenses the entire album into a 15 minute microcosm, shifting endlessly between scratchy big band recordings, radio dial-turning randomness, crackling melodramatic strings, and pastoral Eno/Budd ambience.
Passagenweg is a bit of complex and challenging listen, as a whole. It never achieves what I would call "beauty", but often attains a sort of creepy, otherworldly and bittersweet nostalgia. Lamentably, this mood is always quite fleeting, as the album is packed full of harsh juxtapositions, noise, and violent cut-ups. On the other hand, annoying repeating loops and unpleasant dissonance often unexpectedly transform into something shimmering, compelling, or unexpected. Surprises abound, both positive and otherwise.
The obvious peril with utilizing exotic source material for a sound-collaging is that listeners will find the raw materials more interesting than what you have done with them. Passagenweg does not entirely avoid this peril: there were many moments on the album where I dearly wished that Macé would stop chaotically mutilating and combining gramophone snippets and/or applying watery, insubstantial reverbed piano or strings and let the source material unfold without him. But, alas, that would not be Art. I'm afraid my sensibility clashes somewhat with Macé's, but there are a lot of unique textures and flashes of surreal inspiration here. Also, while Macé does an excellent job concealing his formal classical training, Passagenweg lacks the humor and perverseness that make vaguely similar forays by Nurse With Wound and The Caretaker so enjoyable. Someday this may grow on me more, but for now I think Passagenweg is an inspired near-miss.
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