Bernhard Günter – Un peu de neige salie

1993 • Selektion

Shh, quiet for a minute. Do you hear that? The sound of your own breathing, maybe the hum of the fluorescent lights above your head... or is that just your tinnitus acting up again?

I decided to check out Un peu de neige salie solely out of desire to try something incredibly new and different, in a genre I have almost no experience with: microsound, music essentially composed of sparse, miniscule electronic samples. It's more or less the first microsound release I've ever heard, and while I love these kinds of fresh, almost alien experiences, at the same time that makes it difficult to know how to approach a work like this. Even after a good handful of listens, I still don't have a very good idea of what to think of it. At the very least, it's a damn interesting experience.

One of the most important things about this kind of music is that it requires the listener to really listen carefully—in fact that is the only way to listen to it; you cannot just passively put on and let it sit in the background, because you'll miss absolutely everything. (I've done this, unfortunately.) Without that hold on your attention, it sounds like just random noises and static, but if you let it, it can really pull you in to its bleak, monochromatic world. There's something a bit unsettling about that, but I can definitely appreciate it.

The music—or sounds, rather—are difficult to describe. It's mostly high-pitched tones and subtle glitches and static, almost sounding like playing a slightly dusty record with some bad wire connections in a canyon during winter. It's abstract, murky, and above all else very cold, almost like it doesn't want to be heard. The sound sometimes fades in and out, and can do so for quite a long time, leaving me wondering if I just need to turn the volume up louder or there really isn't anything there. (But even turning it up isn't always the best idea; the occasional loud, screeching stab of noise can be, well, almost painful.)

It's just so strange. Something about the opening of "Untitled II/92" opens with that low, sputtering, visceral noise is strangely both captivating and unnerving. The whole album has this odd sort of foreboding to it; it's like there's a bare glimpse of... something... just behind the static, but you'll never see what it is. But that's just how I read into it, I suppose.

But onto business: Is Un peu de neige salie any good? What's the point in my answering that? It depends on you entirely. This kind of music is not for everyone (or most people, probably). It requires a lot of patience, thought, and likely multiple listens. All I know is that I am glad I found this, as it's given me an incredibly rewarding listening experience. That won't be the case with everyone, but you'll just have to try it to know, won't you?

(Okay, fine, if you must know.) 8