Gerchambeau, Frederic

Artist: Frederic Gerchambeau
P: 2024
Brain Alert continues, in its own way, the line of my previous solo albums already inspired by the work of American minimalists Steve Reich and Terry Riley. That is to say, more clearly, that there will be no melodies or layers, only an improvisation made on an analog sequencer itself integrated into a Eurorack modular system equipped with a powerful echo device. On this basis, as a dressing and additional pleasure for the ear, are superimposed various additions created with Audacity. This excellent free software therefore serves as both a recording studio and a sound laboratory. Brain Alert consists of a single piece of 38 minutes 30. Listening to this rich sequential improvisation will have to be peaceful and attentive in order to follow its evolution and its meanders with gentleness and flexibility.

Artist: Frederic Gerchambeau
P: 2021
Cycles, Echoes & Geometry is an album firmly focused on its subject, the aesthetics of minimalism, but with a wide range of variations within that theme. The tracks progress towards increasing complexity. It is essentially a tribute, in my own way (sequenced on a modular Eurorack), to the three main representatives of American minimalist music: Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass. Although it deals extensively with American minimalist music, Cycles, Echoes & Geometry is a hybrid album.
Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass are evoked through me, in a very personal way. This American minimalist music is also evoked through the language of the Berlin School. Even though I've had a particular love for Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass since my early teens, I remain, in my own way, musically speaking, a child of the Berlin School.
In relation to my previous album, Ars Modularis, it's pointless to look for a single note played on a keyboard here. In Cycles, Echoes & Geometry, there are no melodies, not the slightest texture, but only sequences, nothing but sequences, but enveloped in echoes.
Every album stems from a deliberate choice; mine is that of stripped-down sequences, simply adorned with delay. This ultimately makes Cycles, Echoes & Geometry a solo album that is first and foremost deeply personal.
 

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

Artist: Frederic Gerchambeau
P: 2025
Doggerland continues, in a much more abstract and adventurous way, the line of my previous solo albums already inspired by the work of American minimalists Steve Reich and Terry Riley. That is to say, more clearly, that we will find neither melodies nor layers, only improvisations made on an analog sequencer itself integrated into a Eurorack modular system equipped with a powerful echo device. On this basis, as a dressing and additional pleasure for the ear, are superimposed various additions created with Audacity. This excellent free software therefore serves as both a recording studio and a sound laboratory. Doggerland being made up of 3 pieces, it is therefore as many sequential improvisations fleshed out and transformed that are offered to listen to. Listening that will have to be peaceful and attentive in order to follow with gentleness and flexibility the evolution and the meanders of each of these improvisations.

Artist: Frederic Gerchambeau
P: 2021
ExoLife is an album centered on both Terry Riley-esque minimalism and the sonic possibilities of a Eurorack modular system. Don't look for pads or keyboard melodies; there aren't any. All the music is created exclusively using sequencers. More precisely, it consists of improvisations on analog sequencers, left as is, but augmented with sonic manipulations created using Audacity to build different atmospheres for each track. Since the album's theme is life on other worlds, each track is named after an exoplanet that could potentially harbor distant life.
Although the basic principle is the same, i.e. no keyboard, only sequences embellished with echo, ExoLife has nothing to do musically with the very experimental Ars Modularis and the previous Cycles, Echoes & Geometry.
It's somewhat of a continuation of those two albums, but much gentler, calmer, and more meditative. That's not to say that nothing happens during the album's six tracks. On the contrary. But you have to listen closely and immerse yourself in the atmospheres to appreciate the abundance of continuous micro-evolutions.
Can we still talk about the Berlin School in relation to ExoLife? Frankly, I don't know. Let's just say that, even though ExoLife is completely different from Zeit, I thought a lot about that Tangerine Dream album while making ExoLife. I wanted it to be imbued with that spacey, mysterious, and timeless spirit.
 

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: 2025
Near Death Experience, after Ashta, Pancha Bhuta, Flyby In The Sky and Alcheringa, is the result of my fifth musical collaboration with Philippe Wauman, whose open-mindedness, sense of evanescent and subtle melody, and ability to be constantly different while remaining profoundly coherent, I immediately appreciated. Philippe and I love to travel. Ashta, according to an ancient Persian poem, was a horizontal flight over the seven valleys leading to an immense mountain symbolizing God. Pancha Bhuta, according to the Vedic tradition of ancient India, was a vertical flight from the depths of thick matter to the impalpable ether. Building on our first odysseys, I then proposed to Philippe an extraordinary journey through the planets of our solar system. This is what resulted in Flyby In The Sky. Wishing to take our explorations even further, Philippe and I then chose Dreamtime as the theme of our fourth musical journey. And now here is Near Death Experience, another journey, but this time to the edge of death, on the threshold of the unfathomable, of the ultimate mystery. 6 stages, 63 minutes, it was truly ambitious and perhaps also vaguely risky. Philippe followed me in this slightly crazy project. So I laid the foundations of the album by creating 6 carefully crafted sequences. And Philippe Wauman did the rest, from the most beautiful to the strangest, depending on the moments recounted. It is therefore him who must be thanked, taking my sequences as a springboard, for his magnificent melodic and sonic discoveries which abound in Near Death Experience.

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.

Artist: Frederic Gerchambeau
P: 2024
Qilak continues, in its own way, the line of my previous solo albums already inspired by the work of American minimalists Steve Reich and Terry Riley. That is to say, more clearly, that we will find neither melodies nor layers, only improvisations made on an analog sequencer itself integrated into a Eurorack modular system equipped with a powerful echo device. On this basis, as a dressing and additional pleasure for the ear, are superimposed various additions created with Audacity. This excellent free software thus serving both as a recording studio and a sound laboratory. Qilak being made up of 7 pieces, it is therefore as many sequential improvisations fleshed out and transformed which are offered to listen to. Listening which must be peaceful and attentive in order to follow with gentleness and flexibility the evolution and the meanders of each of these improvisations.