Without the Wolves, reviews:For most glaciers, retreating and advancing are very slow occurrences, noticeable only over a long time. “Redoux”, the almost 24 minutes opening track of “Without the Wolves” by Pali Meursault, compresses time and opens up new spatial perspectives giving to the listeners the possibility to explore a wide range of sounds in a relatively short time span: timbres and dynamics continually change over the duration of the track, from water drops pointillistic symphonies to drone-like aquatic textures. The piece is an extremely detailed montage where short shots are edited into sequences that aim to condense space, time, and information in order to suggest the passage of time, rather than to create symbolic meaning.“Sans les loups” is a short (with respect to the other pieces of the disc) but very intense “interlude”: breathings, distant voices and sounds of melting snow fill up the stereo field in an extreme manner, in fact the almost independent audio channels create a concrete sense of motion.The third and last track, “Foehn”, is a long immersion in the middle of a storm. The sound of the extremely strong wind is enchanting and almost makes you feel tactile sensations. The most impressive feature of the recordings is the crystalline quality of the sounds: it’s not an easy task to record wind noise in such detailed manner, retaining almost all of the characteristics of the original sounds. The second half of the track is the more “musical” part of the record: resonant and slightly reverberated frequencies create a long and thrilling drone melody that add a new dimension to the first part of the record: a really nice game of contrasts.— Elliot Loe, The Field Reporter+ + + +Création sonore : un grand corps en dégel.Cette fois, je vous jure, j’ai ouï. J’ai ouï le dégel et, du grand froid, sourdre une source de vie. Sous les écouteurs, ma tête est une caverne, le centre d’un grand distillateur qui résonne au gré de la fonte. Dedans, ça goutte, ça grouille, ça ruisselle. Par l’entremise de ses micros, l’artiste français Pali Meursault nous fiche les oreilles à l’intérieur du Glacier de Bonne Pierre dans le Massif des Écrins. On se laisse d’abord caresser par les tintements colorés de chacune des multiples gouttes d’eau qui perlent de toute part. Ce picotement de notes pures, quasi électrique, esquisse une mélodie minimaliste. C’est le début du réchauffement, la réinitialisation du système. Une à une, les gouttelettes ne tarderont pas à former des fleuves. Pendant que les flux se forment, le glacier craque, crisse, il s’étire en spirales grinçantes et gémissantes. Le grand corps se réveille. La nature est un organisme qui grouille de sons pour peu que l’on y prête attention.Ce Redoux, dont on peut écouter un extrait sur le site de l’artiste, est la première piste de Without the Wolves, un album dérivé d’excursions microphoniques en montagne. À l’origine de l’œuvre, il y a une randonnée autour de 3000 mètres d’altitude dans ce coin des Hautes-Alpes où l’artiste, solitaire, fait l’expérience auditive de la fonte du glacier. Puis l’année d’après, un retour sur le lieu, cette fois avec la panoplie du preneur de son : une parabole pour se concentrer sur des sources lointaines, des micros de contact qu’il emprisonne dans la glace… tout un travail de terrain très actif qui n’exclut pas l’acte de reconstitution.Dès lors, la contemplation a cédé la place à l’écriture, qui continuera en studio avec d’autres artifices. Est-on dans le documentaire (le glacier comme si vous y étiez) ou la trahison (des glaçons font aussi bien l’affaire) ? De quoi l’enregistrement sonore témoigne-t-il ? Est-il la garantie de l’authenticité ou l’instrument de la fiction ? Ce sont ces mêmes questions que Pali Meursault a posées, en mars 2012, pour le compte du projet Sounds of Europe, à sept autres artistes français adeptes du « field-recording », la prise de son sur le terrain. Leurs réponses (en anglais) sont aussi variées qu’enrichissantes pour quiconque s’intéresse à l’art de raconter le monde par le son.— Étienne Noiseau, Télérama.fr+ + + +Incredibly detailed and immersive concrète sound design from Pali Meursault, presenting his second release on Entr'acte. 'Without The Wolves' was composed from recordings made during excursions to the French Alps in the summer and winters between 2006 and 2008. It traces a similar theme to Giuseppe Ielasi's brilliant 'Alpi' LP as Oreledigneur, but with far more processing involved, resulting in a hyper-natural sense of space, texture and arrangement, amplifying and transforming the aural scenery into vividly rendered soundscapes. The first 'Redoux' captures the melting of the glacier at Vallon de Bonnepierre, unfolding from what sounds like a river of rocky digital scree into chirruping aliens discovered in a cave onto meticulously dynamic drones and burbling acidic chatter. The second, shorter 'Sans les loups' is seemingly a recording of a trek through deep, crunching snow with his pal Fred Pailler in winter 2008, rendering their heavy, laboured breathing and the vast sense of space with a subtly unreal quality. His third composition is also the most impressive, a winter 2007 recording of a storm at Alpe de Villard-d'Arène, placing us at the centre of lashing winds which morph into more visceral, scraping digital textures and metallic drones as the maelstrom subsides, eventually concluding with exquisite, gamelan-like tonal shimmer.— Boomkat.com+ + + +A really fascinating recording with an interesting arc. At the beginning of the first track, we hear a soft but quite detailed range of dripping sounds, reasonably dense but clear, augmented by similarly pitched glitches and cracks, with the odd metallic bang. It's very much of a piece and, in its fashion, rather steady state. I liked it very much and admired Mearsault's sticking to it for quite some time, allowing variations to creep in that didn't disturb the flow but rather focused the listener's attention here and there within the stream. Some 15 minutes in, however, it began to pall a bit. Something, something hard to pinpoint, was no longer clicking. A certain range of drops vanished, perhaps that was it, and I found it disquieting.But this shift, relatively abrupt though it was, began to open up adjacent areas that, while quite different and becoming more so as the piece wore on, seemed somehow appropriate when the opening was reconsidered in hindsight. Bits of radio, whirring buzzes and all manner of detritus appear, eventually evanescing into the dark. Nice.Second and third tracks have more of a field recording feel, from breathing and talking around a fire (?) with what sounds like a good bit of trudging around, to wind-whipped howls and dog yips, all, eventually fanning out into an ethereal ringing, quite beautiful.I got pretty lost in this and enjoyed it a bunch.— Brian Oelnick, Just Outside