richard garet l'avenir

Richard Garet took best part of one year to construct L’Avenir, a 49-minute composition. When beginning his work, he chanced to pick up on the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida. This Algeriandeconstructionist has arguably had more influence on popular music than Robert Johnson and Louis Armstrong put together, and he’s inspired everyone from Scritti Politti to Depeche Mode. Richard Garet managed to find a prose sequence in which Derrida was making one of his very fine distinctions between the meanings of words, and explained very carefully why there is a massive difference in his mind between ‘the future’ and ‘l’avenir’. Lesser men would have simply fallen asleep at this point, but Garet picked up the challenge and has clearly tried to layer much philosophy into this example of his sound art, speculating intensely about the nature of unexpected events and their unforeseen arrival. I think of the four Winds Measure releases we have encountered thus far, this one offers the most substance in the way of a conceptual framework to bolster its intentions, even if any traces of said framework are completely imperceptible in the vague, electronic murmurs that seep out of the disc like a spore of micro-organisms in a yellow cloud. It’s also one of the most beautiful to listen to, possessed of a much ‘cleaner’ sound than the rather gritty and
smeared noise of Cell Memory. Garet is a sound artist and video artist educated in New York, who has an impressive history of multi-media gallery work under his belt.

reviewed by Ed Pinsent issue 17 in the sound projector
9/14/2008