Wandering Rocks is a piece conceived for four electric guitars and 27 loud speakers. The source of the prerecorded sounds is mainly synthesis elaborated with an analogic modular synth called SERGE, in La Muse en Circuit. This piece, about 35 minutes long, is not meant for concert halls, because it is not frontal, but for a large room which can welcome a moving (wandering) audience: the public can walk between the loudspeakers, which are disposed in concentric circles, and between the guitarists, who are in the smallest circle, therefore surrounded by the loudspeakers.
The title comes from a chapter from Ulysses, by James Joyce, entitled “Wandering Rocks”. Joyce’s voice, reading a short excerpt from Ulysses is heard in the second half of the piece.
A CD is certainly problematic to fully represent a work which was on the one hand an immersive sonic experience, and on the other hand linked to a political/satirical dramaturgy, expressed via movements, videos and projected texts. This recording, therefore, is a third easy-teenage version of this material, devoted to a stereo late-by-night entertainment. Elements from both pieces have been used, as well as another time organisation, because the movement of the listener in Wandering Rocks as in Commodity Music requires another musical place.
Here’s a recap of the Zwerm collaborations together with François Sarhan & La Muse en Circuit in Palais de Tokyo and Chateau de Chambord, to be continued!