A fascinating work of experimental electronica which chillingly relates how detached we have become from both our spiritual selves and the organic earth.

It is unclear whether Quebec’s Galerie Stratique (Charles-Émile Beullac) is presenting us with a vision of the future or his interpretation of the modern desensitized world. Either way the outlook is grim. Our emotional touchstones are removed, replaced by foreign textures and reference points. There are only two truly human sounds: a man speaking woodenly in Fièvre, 1982 and a woman singing on Ville engloutie, but her voice gets buried deep in the mix. Aside from the vibraphone, the instruments themselves do not sound real. Maybe they aren’t. They could be processed field noises. That’s how alien Beullac’s landscape is.

It’s a distillation. As a representation of how removed we have become from both our spiritual selves and the organic earth, it is chilling. As a work of experimental electronica, it’s fascinating.

Galerie Stratique is the alter-ego of Quebec based electronic musician Charles-Emile Beullac. Rêves de béton is his fourth album to date, his first coming back in 2001. Beullac is well steeped in the ambient style of electronics, his work reminiscent of Brian Eno or Jean-Michel Jarre. The main CD, Rêves de béton, is a challenging listen, short ideas of song merging ambient and glitch electonics masterfully. The music here is darker and wildly experimental. Sur les galets uses organic percussion to make a clattering, shuffling mess of electronics. Quinze noeuds has an ethereal operatic sample burbling up behind dark electronica and xylophone. Rêve de bitume is a glitchy mess of menacing Germanic electronics. Beullac has also included a disc of previously unreleased material called Archives Vol. 1 as a bonus disk. This material, left off of his previous three albums, along with some bonus material, is a bit more atmospheric than the main album, but just a bit. Ariens sounds deeply influenced by Kraftwerk, dramatic and grand in scale. Scories slowly builds droning electronics into a howling mess. Beullac is making some dramatically expressive music here, and his range is staggering over these two disks.

Galerie Stratique est le projet du compositeur québécois Charles-Émile Beullac, dont le premier album remonte à 2001 avec Nothing Down-To-Earth. Après ses débuts à saveur de IDM et d’ambient, Beullac nous a offert un virage sublime vers la matière première avec Faux World en 2008. On se demandait ce qui se passait depuis; et il nous est finalement revenu en novembre dernier avec son nouvel album, Rêves de béton. Composé de vingt courtes pièces qui retournent aux sources de la musique concrète et électronique; Beullac nous emporte dans un rétrofuturisme de grande qualité.

Sur les galets démarre sur un son de synthèse scintillant, auquel s’ajoutent des cliquetis, un frottement métallique et du gamelan. La table est mise pour une expérience sonore singulière. Marée montante enchaîne sur une atmosphère lynchienne mélangée à des interférences spatiales. Quinze nœuds continue dans la lignée intersidérale avec ses clapotis synthétiques. Ville engloutie est davantage insaisissable; début grave, chant aérien, vibraphone, et son de thérémine joué comme une bande magnétique élastique.

Karst et Magma passent comme des interludes sci-fi; la première fait un clin d’œil aux années 60, tandis que la deuxième à un certain classique début des années 80. Céphalée est plus percussive, reprenant les impacts de la première pièce en les combinant à des drones panoramiques. Rêve de bitume est un autre interlude ambiant, à la Boards of Canada cette fois-ci.

Crépuscule industriel monte le niveau d’un cran avec son mixage de fou, à mi-chemin entre le minimalisme chirurgical et l’atmosphère enveloppante des «pads» synthétiques… wow. Zone de gris continue dans la précision, mais de façon plus expérimentale. Fièvre mélange un bourdonnement «bouetteux» avec des sonorités radioactives. Tintamarre reprend le vibraphone et l’atmosphère étrange de Marée montante, effets sonores très sixties et basse rythmée en plus.

Bikini Island sonne comme la deuxième partie de Tintamarre, en plus mélodique. Anxiété lyrique retourne à l’expérimentation; ça oscille, ça grésille, les circuits en chignent jusqu’à ce que les «pads» et le thérémine prennent le relais. Aspérités et Combustion lente sonnent, quant à elles, comme la suite de Crépuscule industriel; même finesse microscopique, même délice auditif.

Hyperlinked Landscape fait dans la trame ambiante, avec échantillons cuivrés et rythme jazzé tandis que Flötentanz contraste avec ses impulsions qui rebondissent jusqu’à l’écrasement. Futur antérieur est clairement plus aérienne avec ses échantillons de flûte et son solo de sax. Tibia Utricularis termine l’œuvre sur des notes d’électro expérimental, de pungi et de gamelan.

Rêves de béton est un album pour audiophile d’abord, une sorte de satellite gravitant autour de la planète électronique. Il a un côté intellectuel pour son inspiration de Schaeffer et Stockhausen, culturel pour ses sonorités indonésiennes, comique pour ses mises en scène rétro futuristes, ou technique pour l’excellence de la production. On pardonnera le format très court des pièces, qui permet de passer d’une idée à l’autre sans trop de souci, mais qui désoriente par moment.

From Canada hails Galerie Stratique, also known as Charles-Emile Beullac, and this is fourth release, in fifteen years. He calls himself a sound hunter and his music is all about applying concrete sounds to electronics, and perhaps vice versa. There is a small booklet inside ‘Dreams of Concrete’, as the title translates, in which he explains his influences, a list of stuff (which includes gongs, clay bells, metal bowls filled with some water, but also a Commodore 64, drum machines, effect pedals and roll paper towels. To Galerie Stratique everything is music. There are twenty-one pieces on the first CD, which is the main thing in this package. On the other disc, ‘Archives Volume 1’, there is a bunch of ambient lullabies from his earlier days, that weren’t good enough for his previous releases, but now, polished and refined, are. What I like about the first disc is the simply approach Galerie Stratique has going per piece. Twenty-one songs in forty minutes that equals, say, two minutes average per track. That makes that all of this is short and to the point.

A few bangs here and there, feeding them through a modular set-up and play around with these sparse elements for two minutes is sometimes really enough. To be concise is not easy, but Galerie Stratique does things very well. Each piece is made with quite some imagination, and also the variation is well considered on this album. An excellent mixture of electronic tunes, melodic, witty at times, and a majority of more abstract pieces, that quirky, sad, uplifting, alien and sometimes tedious. With such a variety that is likely to happen.

The bonus disc contains also forty-one minutes, but then ten pieces, so here all is a bit longer and we are promised more ambient like music. That’s what we get indeed. Lots of synthesizers, a bit of drum machines and it seems there is a lot less of electronic processing of acoustic sound material. There is a more minimal approach towards composition here, with synth washes being an obvious connection, but it’s not exclusively like that. Galerie Stratique also plays out some harshertones and tunes such as in the fifth piece (no titles for the pieces on this bonus disc). When he employs a rhythm, I must say I am a little less interested, but luckily those tracks are kept to a minimum. In general this is all a bit different than the first CD, and even while there is a bit of variation in these pieces, I am also inclined to think it’s perhaps a bit superfluous, but surely fans would disagree with me.