Runrizon (Harp pt.2) is made of 2 improvisations. One from the same corpus that led the my 3rd album Sofia Says, out in 2019, it was first conceived as a bonus track but I finally kept it for another purpose, the other when preparing a live gig, so it’s a rehearsal improv. I decided to melt them together, trust their combination, sculpt and reveal elements of both in the mix.

“Continuous flow and not breaks: I do not introduce many articulations or silence. But masses that coexist and respond to each other. It is the chaos that is in nature and that fascinates, the multiplicity.”

My practice of accumulation of sounds i have recorded myself as part of an eclectic sound library, and manipulated in the studio with different techniques, interlacing and multilayering, is a manifest for coexistence, an ode to complexity, that questions the capability of each of the listener to find his / her own path, possibly beyond geography and ego. I’m searching to engage the listener into many sounds at once. Revealing the hidden pulsation, the internal and unique organic rhythmical structure of each single field recording, heterogeneous elements that have no common rhythmic value and each a particular morphology, I tend to built musical holistic compositions like cosmogony. For my diploma in electroacoutic music at the Conservatory in 2015, I wrote a little essay titled Une polyécoute, vers une utopie musicale (Polylistening, towards a musical utopia), which is still today at the center of my experimentations. The ear opens to multiplicity. In simultaneity, each can choose a rhythm, and somehow reactivate his own freedom. Loosening the pace to lose the notion of passing time, getting lost in the sound, going into another time and keeping one’s attention in his presence in the world, here and now.

Tape artist Rinus van Alebeek doing his Berlin based event Das kleine field recordings festival (The little field recordings festival), invited me to join the Paris edition in 2009 : I played recordings from the eastern countries i had been to while navigating the Danube upstream for a few months with the Parisian Collective Mu. I played on that occasion a multiplicity of natural pulses not locked into the temporal grid. But a coexistence of times. Personal and universal rhythms. And dissonances. Afterwards, he wrote me to say I make “Danceable Field Recording”, which I found pretty accurate and decided to keep as a description-definition, together now with Polylistening, I owe this to him.

Segalen has been a genuine explorer of sound for more than 20 years. Besides her record label accreditations and her diploma in electroacoustic composition, she has worked for Radio France Internationale, as a sound mixer for film, before jumping onto many sound art psychogeographical projects and multimedia collaborations under the name of IhearU, while travelling the world to record voices and inspiration for her musical compositions, and giving classes on sound to explore it’s therapeutic dimension, using it as a social tool to interact with diverse audiences. She is focused on polylistening, dissonance and new music, as well as creating people’s encounter in improvisation spacesm She believes all the noises she has collected or manipulated, can coexist in in one inclusive spirit, here and now, and transposes the complexity of the world into soundscapes and DFR compositions (Danceable Field Recording). She has played and engaged sonic conversations among others with, Constanze Ruhm, Marlies PöschI, Shu Lea Cheang, Eunhee Cho, Joachim Montessuis, Jean-Marc Foussat, Best Αvailable Technology, Aki Onda, Brandon LaBelle, duenn, Christine Webster, Collectif Mu, Collectif Fusion, Lutherie Urbaine, while she maintains the experimental electronic project Les Graciés with Eric Douglas Porter (Afrikan Sciences). She is also co-founder of Polyphones, a Parisian network dedicated to women in musical experimentation, and OWO, the electronic Open Women Orchestra. Her music is on Erratum Musical, Frm-at, Coherent States, Kinjiro Tapes et Firecracker Recordings labels.

Part of a different version of this reworked track was released in an extra limited edition cassette on Coherent States in January 2019.

www.ihearu.org
coherentstates.bandcamp.com/album/sofia-says