Lifeworldsound contains a wide range of musical projects, from Semiotek’s Brave the New World, the musical collaborations of Jim MacDonald and Pierre Ouellet Elemental Spirits and Living Memory to the Codec 13 projects as well as the Interspecies Music recordings Whalescapes and Northern Whales.
Lifeworldsound speaks to a growing network of collaborations between artists whose individual vision represent sustained meditations on the social engagement of art and the ethics of communicative practices orienting to the lifeworld in a reclaiming of community and self.
The Current Lifeworldsound Space
The first instance of this new approach to music-making was the creation of Semiotek, a three albums project that was produced as an integrated artistic and aesthetic statement and commentary about the relationship between art and technology. Over several years, and as the technologies evolved and changed, Brave The New World, Dream-less and Time is the Machine were themselves transformed into the current musical statements which offer a sobering meditation on a world struggling to reclaim itself amidst the increasingly meaningless noise of the mass media at the service of corporate and ideological ideals and imperatives.
Brave the New World by Semiotek collapses innovative and interesting musical ideas, grooves and performances into discourses and commentaries on issues of social and existential relevance, such as the politics and practices of institutional power.
Dream-less explores the limits of subjectivity and the constraints on identity and self by looking to the relentless erosion of our ability to dream under the onslaught of media messaging. It asks a simple question, devastating in the implications of its own quarry “what happens when the dreaming(ing) stops…?” In other words, “who will dream for us, and to what ends…?”
Time is the Machine is a meditation on the ethical constraints of communal existence as these are oriented to production, productivity and profit. It examines the hyper-organization and ritualization of everyday life and ponders the effects on options of free-will and self.
Collusion and Collaboration refers, at present (2019) to two distinct recording projects by the music writing team of Jim MacDonald and Pierre Ouellet.
The first recording entitled Elemental Spirits is a sonic meditation on the nature of spirituality itself and it channels, to use that language, the energy flow and fields of the lifeworld in musical forms at once deeply intimate and strangely distant.
Living Memory turns to more popular musical forms to reflect on the place of memory in everyday life – how we are forever shaped by the events of our private and collective pasts while continuously creating new moments and circumstances soon to be remembered themselves as we continue our journey into life’s unknowable future.
Codec 13 is a return to our early days of synthesized electronic music which were inspired by the endless potential of new sound creations and the them seemingly incredible perforative possibilities offered by the emerging electronic music technologies. Long before the present music making systems – when all operation were manual rather than pre-programmed – we were able to imagine an endless sonic horizon whose potential was yet to be written in our daly musical practices and listening rituals.
Utilization Threshold looks at how technology, in its myriad and ubiquitous manifestations, constrains, limits and ultimately defines a growing number of human activities, from the most benign to the most important and significant. It is about the use of technique as power in the irreducible quest for social and individual control.
The Reign of the Machine imagines a society where humans have allowed the technological imperative to shape all aspects of collective life, in the process, abandoning humanity for its virtual counterpart.
Interspecies Music gathers the individual and collective efforts of the musical group of the same name. Nearly 50 years later, we remember our deep commitment to a world where we nurture and support all species in our commitment to the very nature of life itself.
Northern Whales contains recordings of a number of species of whales and other marine wildlife in the wild and in captivity. They are a remarkable record of soundscapes that have, for the most part, ceased to exists, never to be heard again. It is also a poignant reminder of how our common destiny depends on the health of the world’s oceans and how all creatures who inhabits them depend on our sustained efforts
Whalescapes is an improvisational meditation on the possibilities of deep communications between and across species. It also offers hope that we might work to overcome, as well, all other manner of differences that exist in our own lives and work to oppose all tangible forms and practices of institutional and collective estrangement and alienation.
Intersession is a compilation of early experimental music by Pierre Ouellet. It includes performances by Robert Stevenson and Interspecies Music.
Lifeworldsound is now reaching into the future with new recordings and the continued reclaiming of past archival materials. We will keep all informed as these intuitions and ideas come to full term as finished works and sound projects. Please See Upcoming…
