eRikm
Lux Payllettes
CD (E94)
“With this piece, I have worked with the sound material of Western
cinema in its many manifestations: from optical film sound to video
tape, DVD and also with sounds that I have recorded in cinemas
during projections. My interest in media perception was ostensibly
in one’s own relationship with the act of listening to motion picture
sounds: its clichés, tensions, diminutions, sound effects, and the
emerging emotional palettes. Yet Lux also reviews the process of
one’s identification with certain actors or sections of the population,
suggesting the potentially schizophrenic relationship with these
projections.”
“A schizoid balade, a deftly orchestrated, sometimes hysterical
melodrama of sounds on the run in search of an unfettered spatio-
temporal continuum in the sun and a privileged view of the
nothing new. Eternity, or just sea and sky and a skipping CD?”
Based in Marseille, eRikm’s work references both the intimate and
the political, popular and high culture. Maintaining a constant fusion
between thought, instinct and sensitivity, he pursues a simultaneity
of practices which address the interplay between various composi-
tional modes. His work has been released and exhibited widely.
Lux Payllettes includes texts by eRikm and Graeme Thomson, and
is released to coincide with Mu and Mono, two exhibitions of cross-
media work by eRikm at La Friche La Belle de Mai in Marseille
(3 July–21 August) and Espace Multimédia Gantner in Bourogne
(10 July–18 September 2010).
First edition of 300 copies
£8
The relevance of the title of the CD — which my schoolboy French
leads me to believe is a reference to soap powder — is a bit of a
mystery. Perhaps eRikm is making a point about commercialism
in the movie business, commenting on the way both movies and
advertising are able to mobilise and manipulate our desires through
the interface of sound and image. The listener is invited to consider
how sonic cyphers, whether sourced from Foley tracks, dialogue or
musical scores, all immediately create images in the mind’s eye by
means of transforming, layering and juxtaposing them so that new
contexts are created. Occasionally the breakneck pace of the music
works against the artist’s higher purpose and the data bombard-
ment feels a little hackneyed, but the compensatory pleasures of
playing ‘spot the movie’ are undeniable.
Keith Moliné in The Wire