Text written by Diego Chamy

Musicians and composers are usually concerned about following or discovering a certain logic which would be internal and particular to the piece on which they are working. However, Formnction refuses this idea from the beginning. Its parts are put together without following inner material reasons. Like patchwork (or a quilt), the materials consist of unselected remnants from other pieces, and the focus is more on the shape or form that the authors wanted to construct with these 5 minute long excerpts than in what the excerpts themselves are. The musical content of these excerpts was not judged, and it seems that there were no predetermined expectations regarding what the final result would be.

Not judging the musical content of these excerpts makes any aim of essentialism immediately disappear. At the same time, the time entity “5 minutes” receives a special reality status, which doesn’t depend on its content. It is now free to function differently, not in what it is but in the temporal relations it maintains with other entities. In this way, the “material” of the piece – or what we think it is – is ignored. The 5 minutes, understood as concrete pieces of time, become the sole material. Formnction is an attempt to take a step beyond the way we understand materiality. And this is confirmed not only in the first piece, which is a kind of diagram made out of simplified digitally generated media, but also in the acoustic piece, in which we also encounter a conversion in the material, but by other means (not by creating a diagram but by arbitrarily mutilating acoustic recordings).

But essentialism is not the only ideal compromised. Any aim of naturalism disappears too, because, although the pieces were not recorded in a studio, the site-specific work ideal is still broken since the pieces are arbitrarily cut and put together. In the acoustic piece, the audible characteristics of the surroundings where the pieces were recorded are reduced to the minimum needed for creating a clear understanding of passing from one excerpt to the other. The different surroundings express nothing else. The transitions are what should be heard, not the sounds. The same goes for the digital piece (even when we don’t have the surroundings in it to help us understand the end of one excerpt and the beginning of the next).

In Formnction there is a shift in the normal idea of matter which makes time a completely strange entity. We imagine time as a container where events occur, or as a pure intellectual structure. But Formnction makes these interpretations unsatisfactory: time is taken out of these categories and we are pushed to experience it in its material dimension. The concept of matter is separated from the empirical (wasn’t the empirical always the most abstract thing?), and once this happens, we have two new things: an empirical plan not constituted by materiality, and a new matter that has nothing to do with anything empirical. We are put somewhere else, left with questions that we are not sure we can answer; questions thrown to the future (the now). What is happening in between these 5-minute extracts? Why aren’t we able to experience 5 minutes all at once? Would it be better to scratch this CD before playing it? And what about any other CD?

Diego Chamy l June 2008

Protocole

1. Nous enregistrons six pièces improvisées de 30 minutes dans six lieux différents, et numérotées chronologiquement de 1 à 6. Toutes les pièces ont été enregistrées par nos propres moyens.
2. Le dispositif de prise de son est déterminé en fonction de l'écoute que nous avons de chaque lieu.
3. Chaque improvisation est découpée dans sa longueur en six fragments de 5 minutes.
4. Nous fabriquons une pièce de 30 minutes composée de six fragments des six pièces improvisées. Les cinq premières minutes de la pièce recomposée correspondent au 1er fragment de la pièce improvisée n°1 (de 0:00 à 5:00), les 5 minutes suivantes correspondent au 2ème fragment de la pièce improvisée n°2 (de 5:00 à 10:00), et ainsi de suite. Nous obtenons une pièce instrumentale de 30 minutes, constituée des six fragments chronologiques
5. Nous fabriquons une pièce numérique de 30 minutes à partir de la pièce improvisée n° 4 que nous jugeons adéquate pour cela. Les sons de saxophone (Marc Baron) et de contrebasse (Loïc Blairon) sont remplacés respectivement par des fréquences de 1000hz et 500hz. Le bruit de fond est remplacé par du blanc numérique.
6. La pièce numérique (-1) est en 1ère lecture sur le CD car nous aimons l'effet que cela procure à l'écoute. Nous aimons aussi l'inverse. Nous recommandons d'essayer les deux.

Marc Baron, Loïc Blairon (2008)

How we proceed
1. We record six improvised pieces of 30 minutes each, in six different locations, numbered in chronological order from 1 to 6. All pieces were recorded in France by our means.
2. The sound recording process is decided upon the listening experience we have in each location.
3. Each improvised piece is divided into six 5-minute long parts. 
4. We make a 30-minute piece composed of six excerpts from the six improvised pieces. The first five minutes of the recomposed piece are extracted from improvised piece #1 (from 0:00 to 5:00) ; the next 5 minutes consist of another excerpt from improvised piece #2 (but from 5:00 to 10:00), and so forth. We thus achieve a 30-minute long instrumental piece, composed of six excerpts in chronological order.
5. We produce a 30-minute digital piece based on improvised piece #4, which we consider suitable for this purpose. The sounds of the saxophone (Marc Baron) and the double-bass (Loïc Blairon) are respectively replaced with 1000 and 500 Hz frequencies. The background noise is removed by digital noise cancellation.
6. The digital piece (-1) is the first track on the CD because we enjoy the listening experience it provides. We also like the reverse - starting with the acoustic piece (2) – and we recommend to try both.

Marc Baron & Loïc Blairon (2008)

Ce disque est exemplaire des contrées les plus avancées où s'aventurent désormais bon nombre d’improvisateurs à travers la porosité des outils et les méthodes hybrides qui brouillent les frontières entre hasard et nécéssité.
En 1952 avec Four systems, Earle Brown représentait les trois fondamentaux du son - amplitude, temps, registre - comme des segments noirs se déployant dans l'espace de la page et semblables aux enveloppes dans le plan de travail d'un séquenceur.
La représentation du son à l'écran, les supports de reproduction instrumentalisés, le temps réel et différé, les pistes comme des portées, autant de facteurs que l'on retrouve ici.
Le duo commence par faire des captures très encadrées au saxophone et à la contrebasse de 30 mn chacune en tenant compte de la spécificité acoustique de chaque lieu. De ces six prises de 30 mn, il extrait une plage de 30 mn qui servira à une version studio d'égale durée. Les proportions à l'œuvre qu’elles soient de durée ou d'harmonie, et qui structurent Formnction reposent sur l'octave, cette consonance parfaite, idéale pour les effets de doublure, de miroir. Le renversement des parties, la matrice live venant après sa doublure numérique par exemple, soulignant l'efficacité, la cohérence et la simplification radicale des choix conceptuels du duo.
L'audition sera imprégnée de cette organicité d'échelles, ce va-et-vient entre la pureté gauchie par le souffle du saxophone, les aspérités boisées de la contrebasse et le chant implacablement régulier des alternances d'octaves des ondes sinus percé de longs silences.
Elaguée de tout ornement superflu, la nature autotélique du son rayonne, exalte le constructivisme de NARTHEX, l'émanation, puissamment ancrée dans l'écoute de sa mise en abîme généralisée (son/musi-
que, octave/unisson, bruits/silences...). Ce joyau coupant aux arêtes dures et scintillantes, hostile à la routine des produits formatés est aussi, et peut-être surtout, une ode à la liberté jaillie du cœur des contraintes les plus strictes.
Chaque seconde martèle et magnifie son écologie sonore de chair et de silicium avec l'acharnement solitaire des sommets.
Le label Potlach de son coté fait preuve d' une méme radicalité en se frottant à ce paysage de pierre et de feu.
Boris Wlassoff l Revue & Corrigée l Septembre 2009

A l’image du nom qu’ils se sont choisis pour opérer en duo (Narthex qui, dans l’architecture religieuse, désigne le portique précédant la nef d’une église), Marc Baron et Loïc Blairon gardent leurs distances vis-à-vis du spectacle et interrogent les relations entre espace et perception. Improvisateurs sollicitant leur instrument avec parcimonie, les deux musiciens privilégient l’écoute –la leur, la nôtre- à la production sonore, sculptant le silence comme un matériau dont la consistance évolue selon l’environnement où il est capturé.
Muni d’un saxophone alto, Baron, que l’on avait découvert en 2007 au sein d’un quatuor de souffleurs sur l’album Propagations, perfore le bruit de fond avec de longues notes soutenues qui viennent souligner des volumes jusqu’alors imperceptibles. L’usage de la contrebasse (dont est crédité Blairon) se fait encore plus rare ou en tout cas échappe souvent à l’identification. Mais l’essentiel est sans doute ailleurs, peut être dans les lieux où ont été enregistrées ces différentes performances (six au total) dont seules quelques séquences ont été découpées puis mises bout à bout. Acoustique in situ et moyens de prise de son changent sans changer, colorant infinitésimalement l’écho de timbres éphémères, altérant d’un demi-décibel les vibrations de l’air ambiant et brossant par le vide d’immatériels paysages. La distanciation se radicalise encore un peu plus sur une seconde pièce (la première dans l’ordre de présentation du CD) qui utilise un processus de numérisation pour dépouiller méthodiquement une demi-heure d’improvisation. Les sonorités des deux instruments converties en uniques fréquences (500 et 1000 Hz), les aspérités de l’à peine audible remplacées par du blanc absolu, toute trace de relief s’efface définitivement dans une posture doublement réductionniste.
Jean-Claude Gevrey l Octopus l Juillet 2009

A prove-nothing experiment revolving around a complex procedure – which definitely won’t be repeated here – through which saxophonist Marc Baron and double bassist Loïc Blairon generated two 30-minute segments, one made with the sounds of their real instruments, the other obtained by substituting the actual sonic occurrences with frequencies of 1000 and 500 Hz. The latter version constitutes the first partition of the album and is an utter bore, sounding like a joke at the expense of the audience. Beeps and silences – lengthy silences – for half a hour. The second part is surely superior, the expert listener at least perceiving the “breath” of the playing despite the small number of notes and the interminable moments of absence of everything. A couple of long-held tones by Baron acted interestingly with my momentary position (walking in the room while listening is fine, better still if you don’t care about the compositional poverty of the pieces), whereas the tiny manoeuvres and percussive connotations used by Blairon on the bass are mainly forgettable. A thunderstorm broke out as yours truly was intent in understanding what’s so special in this music to be released by Potlatch – usually a label that publishes more important stuff - and literally saved the day: the interaction between the rumble and this writer’s sense of doubt amidst sparse (and largely inconsequential) pitches and disinterested thuds let me conclude the experience with a sigh. This is not an ugly record; just a neutral, undemonstrative thing. Which is even worse. File under “I’ll probably never listen to this again”.
Massimo Ricci l Temporary Fault l October 2009

To say that Narthex is a duo consisting of alto player Marc Baron and bassist Loic Blairon is a bit off the mark. While alto and bass are the sound sources, the two pieces on this CD are conceptual distillations of the process around creating musical form. Make no mistake: this is highly formalized music. The two recorded six improvisations of exactly 30 minutes each in locations around France. For the first piece, they took one of the improvisations and digitally replaced the sound of the saxophone and bass with two sine waves of 1000 and 500 Hz frequencies. The background was then totally removed with digital noise cancellation. What is left is totally bereft of gesture, timbre, inflection, or dynamics, leaving only duration. This is truly binary music; over the course of the 30-minute piece, each tone is either on or off. Starting with sheer silence, the form emerges from the patterns of a long upper register tone and a chopped flow of the lower tone. The structure emerges solely from the balance between sound, silence, and the overlap of the two frequencies.
The second piece is no less beguiling. Here, the first 5 minutes of the first improvisation are followed by the second 5 minutes of the second improvisation, and so on through each of the six recordings. There are no other edits, no attempts at smoothing transitions. Baron's shredded alto overtones and Blairon's percussive string slaps and delicate plucked patterns come through. Additionally, the room presence is readily apparent. But here the form is shaped as much by how the fractured flow is meted out by the construction of the piece as it is by the duo interaction. Despite the chance element in the construction, the piece still develops a cohesiveness due to the improvisational strategies of the two musicians. Listening to the two pieces in differing orders brings out further notions of the formal constructs. This disc is not an easy listen. But its rewards are in the way it makes the listener think about the process of its construction.
Michael Rosenstein l Signal to Noise l September 2009

The music on Formnction was produced using unusual experimental methods. The process is described by Narthex—saxophonist Marc Baron and bassist Loic Blairon—in a useful introductory sleeve note. (...)
So that's the recipe. How is the final dish? Well, as an album it makes strange listening, with the two tracks contrasting dramatically.
-1, the electronic piece derived from one of the sax and bass duo improvisations, is a real oddity. Replacing the saxophone by a 1000 Hz tone and the bass by a 500 Hz tone means that we only know when the two instruments were playing or not playing (i.e. were on or off). Details of pitch, timbre and volume that make improvisations interesting are all removed. So one minute of the 500Hz tone indicates that the bass was playing for that length of time but there are no clues in the unbroken monotone as to what exactly was played in that time.
Consequently, the piece is stripped of any sense of interaction between the players and of any emotion or humanity. The listener could also quibble about the choice of frequencies used to replace the instruments; in particular, 500 Hz is far too high to give any sense of it replacing a double bass. Given these provisos, as an electronic composition, -1 works as intended. Nonetheless, it would have been intriguing to be able to hear it alongside the original recording from which it was derived (maybe one on each channel?)
2 almost works as intended, but creates frustrations of its own. Its construction of five-minute excerpts from six separate improvisations means that an unbroken run of improvisation is never heard without there being a change. Also, the third excerpt seems to have undergone the same treatment as produced -1 so the sax and bass are unheard for those five minutes. Although the edits do not jar, there is the feel of the flow and momentum having been disrupted. On the evidence here, Baron and Blairon improvise well as a duo, producing pregnant silences and bursts of noise in equal amounts; it would have been good to hear more of them playing together.
The tragedy of this release is that from the three hours of improvised music that were recorded, none of Narthex's half hour improvisations is heard in its entirety, unaltered. The improvisations have been sacrificed for the sake of experimenting with the methodology. An interesting attempt.
John Eyles l All About Jazz l August 2009

OK, talk about yer conceptualism. I think what's the case in the first of the two equal length tracks is that the sounds originally produced in six improvised situations by Marc Baron (saxophone) and Loic Blairon (string bass), after having been resegmented into six excerpts thereof, have "simply" been replaced by two sine tones of 1000hz and 500hz, any ambient sounds having been digitally erased. Most of the source performance was, presumably, rather spare, so one is presented with one of two tones, occasionally overlapping, laid amidst pure silence. It could be dry as a bone, but somehow it's not. Richard, in his write-up mentioned repeated xeroxing; I found myself thinking more of the solarization process used (still?) in photography, wherein the image is increasingly abstracted toward either black or white, often resulting in a kind of fine line drawing. It has a resoluteness that's ultimately winning, though it'll try many a listener's patience.
Bold move to place that cut, the supremely spare one, first. When the second, acoustic, version appears, it's difficult not to feel that someone's thrown open the windows. Fascinating to re-hear the sounds in their "natural" state, all the depth and variation (though still spare) that was transmogrified previously. Again, these are six five-minute excerpts from 1/2 hour performances (the first five from the first, the second five from the second, etc., therefore accesses more or less randomly). Still, as a suite, they're kind of wonderful: smudges, taps and punctuated shrieks, unhurried but urgent.
A unique release, one I quite enjoyed.
Brian Olewnick l Just outside l June 2009

(...) Formnction is the first release by the duo called Narthex on the Potlatch label. This is a release I was very curious to hear after reading recent reports. Narthex are the saxophone / double bass duo of Marc Baron and Loic Blairon respectively.
(...)
The first thing to say about this music is that there is plenty of silence involved. Formnction fits neatly into the canon of somewhat conceptual, uncompromising but equally intriguing releases we normally expect from the likes of Taku Unami, Radu Malfatti, Taku Sugimoto or the Encadre musicians. As the notes above state, the first half-hour long piece is a digital work that constructs one of the acoustic improvisations the musicians played, but switching the instruments for two sinetones, and replacing the hum of the room noise with digital silence, effectively removing all evidence of the musicians and their quiet, sparse music, or at least in their human guise, and replacing it with a highly simplified facsimile. The metaphor of a fax actually works well for me here. It is as if someone took a Turner painting and fed it through a photocopier with the contrast turned up. What remains is a black and white reproduction that loses all unnecessary detail, with just a basic outline of the same size and shape remaining. It has a strange, cold, almost brutal beauty to it. A thick, clingy tone replaces what were probably long sax lines, and smaller popping tones replace the bass. There is a lot of white space in there too.
The second track is, as the notes again detail, put together using six clinically separated segments from six different improvisations recorded in different places, the first five minutes being the first five minutes of the first improv, the second five minutes being the music between 5 and 10 minutes on the second improv, and so on until the six five minute segments form a half-hour long piece. This is a curious work that I like a lot. Any attempt as a listener to try and listen in the normal manner falls short, because as each five minute section passes we enter a different time and place and the music follows off in another direction. There isn’t much music here again, just carefully places sax tones and occasional violent wrench at the bass, but actually the clearest indication that the music has moved from one recording to another is when the faint roomtone that can be heard on most of the segments alters slightly.
I’m not sure about what conceptually drives this music, but I cannot help but feel that the erasure of the human touch has something to do with it. Initially the improvised music, performed by the traditional jazz-related sax / bass instrumentation denies so much of the history of those instruments, and the sounds we get are few and far between, and somewhat removed from the history of the instruments. Then the flow and expression of the improvisations is curtailed when the music is chopped up at even, predetermined points dictated by a stopwatch rather than where the good music may lie. then in the final transformation of the music the sounds are all removed and replaced by the off or on polarisation of the digital reworkings. I am reminded of Radu Malfatti’s digital realisations of some of the scores he originally wrote for instrumental groups.
While as you may guess Formnction will not please those that have little time for the conceptual end of things I rather like the way this has all come out. The digital piece has a hard, constructivist feel to it that my graphic design trained mind rather likes. At the same time, trying to listen to the acoustic cut-up piece as a single musical work is also an interesting experience. I wonder if, when music gets this minimal, when the palette contains only very few colours and the sounds are somewhat oblique does the collage method of its creation really show? Were the original, sparse improvisations any more coherent than the final piece we hear on the album? Just working through this CD a few times, letting these ideas stew is a nice way to spend an evening. I like Formnction a lot, but many other won’t. Beautiful sleeve design too.
Richard Pinnell l The Watchful Ear l June 2009

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