Please pick one from the following survey. The distinction between "music" and "sound art" is:
- Fine
- Broad
- Awesome
If you picked option three, you're in luck with this month's acoustic feature: Philippe André Landry and his 2010 mini-album, Terrible Bonnet. Whether he's working in a visual, sculptural, or musical area, Philippe is always exploring the links between experimentalism and accessibility, producing work that is consistently odd and beyond traditional scope, while at the same time imminently listenable.
It's become depressingly easy to think of sound art as stuff that is dependant on a particular environment: so much is derived from 4'33": innovative, thought-provoking, wildly influential, and possibly the least fun thing a person can do with five minutes of their time. Other disciplines do not suffer so from this division: E. E. Cummings is a gas to read, and folks like Vernon Frazer continue in the tradition of poetry that is both experimental and ecstatic. "Noise artists" produce sound art that's a great deal of fun to experience live, but is as ultimately dependent on circumstance as is 4'33"; one can hardly imagine buying a noise art CD to play while riding on the Greyhound. But Philippe avoids this trap entirely. Are you stuck at a city bus stop, listening to some would-be preacher try to convince you of your wicked ways? Why not listen to the first track of Terrible Bonnet, and let Philippe damn you to hell instead? It's satisfying, mind-opening, and pleasurable in any environment.
Mind, Philippe does do installation-specific work: I first experienced his work as he performed live in front of the contemporary dance piece, I've Stopped Having That Dream I've Been Having, and he does both sound and visual work for a variety of collaborative efforts. Philippe describes himself as largely a collaborative artist, and perhaps this fuels his experimental listenablity: Philippe's work is the sort of stuff that can be moved into thought paradigms other than his own, a flexibility which many cross-discipline artists lack.
Philippe André Landry is a self-taught composer, multi-instrumentalist, and sound, visual, and performance artist. Philippe has collaborated three times with choreographer Paige Krause, composing and performing the music for her large-scale, dance-installation piece, I've Stopped Having that Dream I've Been Having. It premiered as an excerpt in the Spring of 2011 at the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette, was expanded for a second installment in Fall of 2011, and has recently been shown at the 2012 St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival in Montreal, Quebec for a six show run at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montreal.
As a sound and visual artist Landry has shown and collaborated in various group exhibits in New Orleans, including sound and visual art at the Front, soundscapes at Parse NOLA, Home Space, and Prospect 1.5, and mixed media installations at Good Children Gallery and Loyola University. He has also exhibited sound art at SPACES in Cleveland, Ohio. His work has been discussed in Gambit Weekly and Pelican Bomb.
Philippe holds a Bachelors in Anthropology from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and has done graduate-level research on right-wing political culture in early 20th Century France, including presenting a paper on culture and nationalism at the Western Society for French History 2010 annual conference.
We are very proud to present the Terrible Bonnet EP, available here in streaming form. This 20-minute album contains three tracks: "Blessins' n' Curses n' Tiny Skull Mute," "Nine Malic Molds," and "Bird, Fish-Snake and Scarecrow." It's some of our favorite and work by Philippe, offering a variety of sounds and styles, and one of the many awesome features of PhilippeAndreLandry.com.
Then check out PhilippeAndreLandry.com!
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