Gerchambeau, Frederic

Artist: Frederic Gerchambeau & Bertrand Loreau
P: 2020
Frédéric Gerchambeau and Bertrand Loreau are two prominent (and current) members of a genre called Berlin School, which, since its birth in the late sixties, has spread throughout Europe - and elsewhere - and still offers us great reminders and nods to what we were already able to do with synths, well before the era of all-digital. If this "school" - it is more discreet in this millennium, and if its teachers and students have grown - some have died, like Edgar Froese - the "hard-liners" who perpetuate gender and analogy against the winds and (raz-de) tides (those of electronica, techno, etc.) are also able to renew it. And, we hope to reach a new audience that was not even born in the early days of analog synths ...
This is part 2 of their journey toghether. 2 Pieces of great Berlin School ! So we find brilliant Berlin School music here.

Artist: Frederic Gerchambeau & Bertrand Loreau
P: 2018
Catvaratempo is the new album from Frédéric Gerchambeau and Bertrand Loreau. It is a new combination of Fréderic's experimental sequences with Bertrand Loreau's sensitive universe. Because of their differences the two composers create an unique landscape of sounds and sequences. They built a bridge between berlin school and more experimental, or even avant-garde music. Catvara » means the number "four" in a very old language, the Sanskri. The four tracks are like four different spiritual ways on four different mountains, to get closer to the common world of peace and love. The two musicians want to go back to the spirtit of the seventies, when Berlin School was like a door opened to new sounds and atmospheres and could be heard as a search for cosmic connections. This CD will be a great experience for all fans of old analog sequences and pads that will catch the spirit of Klaus Schulzes Timewind or Tangerine Dream Rubycon. Feel invited to explore this innovative blend of electronic impulses. Mastered by Michel Geiss

Artist: Frederic Gerchambeau + Zreen Toyz
P: 2011
Liking pushing aside the notion of composer or musician, the French artist Zreen Toyz (born in 1954) often presents himself as Sound Sculptor or Sound Poet. After few years in classic training on piano and percussions, he does not appreciate the stifling conformity of the academy and turns to the improvised musics. The continuation of its training is essentially self-taught. He crosses composers as Luc Ferrari and Ilhan Mimaroglu, but his meetings with Herman Poole Blount, more known under the name of Sun Ra, and the improvised electronic musics, in particular that of Tangerine Dream (period 1970-1975) and that of Conrad Schnitzler (he meets him in Berlin in 1973), are really determining for his sound experiments. Since his first pieces created in 1970, he works the sound material following inspiration of the moment, a raw and instinctive approach by stratification where any imperfection or sound incident become a harshness on which to hang on atmospheres or reflections. In this way, he creates impalpable and timeless landscapes where vibrations, noises, and collages erase the structure of the piece.

Artist: Frederic Gerchambeau + Zreen Toyz
P: 2015
Sometimes experimentel and sometimes full of ideas with a lot of analogue sounds.

Artist: Frederic Gerchambeau
P: 2019
Four long Modulartracks, that fascinate only through the little changes within the music.

Artist: Frederic Gerchambeau
P: 2009
Four long sequencertracks, that fascinate only through the little changes within the music.

Artist: Frederic Gerchambeau
P: 2009
Sometimes experimentel and sometimes full of ideas with a lot of analogue sounds and sequences.

Artist: Frederic Gerchambeau
P: 2010
Self-taught musician having plunged in the electronic music at the age of 17, back in 1977. Having initially begun very modestly with Kawai 100-F resold for Korg MS-20, he since was interested in all the known forms of sound synthesis, in particular through the intensive and deepened use of software Plogue Bidule from Québec. Having acquired recently a Northern Clavia Modular G2, it is from now on with this extraordinary tool for research that it continues to explore the most moved back regions of sound creation.

Artist: Frederic Gerchambeau
P: 2014
Sounds! A constellation of sounds and their correlations in a purely experimental pattern. Dissonances or electronic harmonies? The heart of the debate. Adventurer of sounds, as much comfortable in harmonic envelopes as in cacophonous spheres, Frédéric Gerchambeau pushes his sound experiments to the limits of the tolerance with an album built on loops and echoes which are used as supports to a sound constellation without rhythms, nor harmonies. The idea behind the concept is more a matter of theory where Frédéric Gerchambeau illustrates, in sounds, methods of composition which are dear to him by exploring sonic territories that he would never have imagined. The result is rather puzzling and will suit mainly to the real fans of synths, their tones and their immense possibilities. I'll say it straight to you; I heard in this nothing very appealing if we are seeking for melodies or rhythms. Except that once we took knowledge of the reasons and motivations around “New Colors of Sound”, we listen to it with another ear. But the result remains the same. The sounds gather in our ears such as a thousand of bees uncertain to want to pollinate and where they are a little lazy, like winds without strength. Although in "Uncertainty Bridge", doubtless the most musical music piece of “New Colors of Sound”, they roar, fume and doze off in the fascinating colors of the multiple reverberations. One would say an exorcist of a synth possessed by the Phantom of the Opera. And it's even more true in the cathedralesque, "Circumreverbambulation" which eats our eardrums with its reverberations which agglutinate and crawl such as a knot of grass-snakes in the mud. The effect of big organ with hoarse sounds remains rather intrusive. Each track is delivered in a spirit of live sessions. There is no re-recordings and Frédéric Gerchambeau shows a surprising cohesion (Uncertainty Bridge) for a completely improvised music. I wouldn't say that Gerchambeau reveals here pallets of sounds in order to build harmonious landscapes. No. I would rather say that he democratizes the ambiences, the art and the possibilities of synths by bringing them to a closer level of understanding of the general public. At this level, the progression of "Watching the River Flow", I like the very cosmic background in it, is rather attractive if we put ourselves in the skin of an astronaut of sounds. For the rest, we cross perfumes of cosmic dissonances in some ambient chirping where Frédéric Gerchambeau remains proud of his uncompromising approaches which demonstrate, and it is the ultimate purpose of this exercise on the color of the sound, the  immense possibilities of a modular system. Good listening. And say to yourselves that EM has started from there. Imagine now all the genius which hides beneath the envelopes of skin of those who grind and torture those toys, bringing EM at the level it is today!
Sylvain Lupari (January 31st, 2015)

Artist: Frederic Gerchambeau & Nicolas Guillemant
P: 2020
Primitive Blue is the result both convoluted and out of any listed style of my meeting with Nicolas Guillemant, another electronic musician. Crossed over on the French-speaking forum Anafrog, I immediately liked his musical style, which was very personal, very melodic and very daring. It was I who, through an email, expressed my strongest desire to make an album with him. As I own a modular Eurorack and he has a Moog Matriach, I thought it would be interesting to have our two machines talk. So we married my way of doing sequences with his way of creating superb melodic climates. This resulted in four long tracks where evolutionary sequences, moving melodies, simple but heady rhythms, and track manipulation finally blend together in a rather strange way to add an enigmatic touch to all of this. The goal was to find somewhere the feeling of freedom of the krautrock of the mid-1970s, by thinking of Cluster or Harmonia, without trying to copy them at all, but by returning to this absence of prohibition in favor of pieces of an almost primitive simplicity but yet full of subtleties. In fact, Primitive Blue, listened to in its continuity, is a musical journey of a little over fifty minutes crossing climates that are both relatively similar and objectively different, like the four well-characterized regions of the same musical universe.