Blending the autonomous compositions of Nabaz'mob, his opera for 100 smart rabbits, with the vibrant naturalism of "Dawn at Shimiyacu", a field recording from Peru's Amazon rainforest, Jean-Jacques Birgé along with Antoine Schmitt juxtaposes minimalist robotic orchestrations with raw environmental soundscapes, creating a genre-defying exploration within his signature sonic universe.
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Sample The Album:
Jean-Jacques Birge-composer, performer
Antoine Schmitt-composer, performer
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Includes a 12-page color booklet with images, credits and an essay by Jean-Jacques Birge in French and English.
UPC: 3760012000388
Label: GRRR
Catalog ID: GRRR 2038
Squidco Product Code: 35598
Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2024
Country: France
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold 3 Panels
Track 1 recorded at EuraTechnologies, in Lille, Frane, in December, 2010.
Track 2 recorded in the Peruvian rainforest, in August, 2024.
Track 3 recorded live at the Carre des Jalles, in Saint-Medard-en-Jalles, France, in April, 2009.
"Whether or not you're one of the lucky 200,000 who owned a Nabaztag rabbit or attended Nabaz'mob, the opera for 100 smart rabbits, you'll love Animal Opera, the new CD by Jean-Jacques Birge. His recording this summer in Peru of L'aube a Shimiyacu (Dawn at Shimiyacu) in the Amazon rainforest inspired him to accompany it with two different versions of the opera he imagined with Antoine Schmitt in 2006. Each hutch had its own autonomy, just as each rabbit had its own free will. The fairy-tale, minimalist music of the 100 plastic robots contrasts with the noise or drone music produced by the elytra of strange insects. After a hundred or so albums, most recently his 100th Anniversary (1952-2052) and the 3 volumes of Pique-nique au labo with 48 soloists, this is Birge's first album without any musicians, even at the controls. Absorbed in nature or entrusting the wi-fi to conduct an orchestra of a hundred mini-synthesizers, the polymath once again rediscovers the magic of his instantcompositions."-GRRR
"Dawn at Shimiyacu" is a naturalist composition by Jean-Jacques BIRGÉ.
"Nabaz'mob", a collaboration between Jean-Jacques BIRGÉ and Antoine SCHMITT, was awarded the Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction Digital Musics 2009.
"French multi-instrumentalist, sound designer, director and musical omnivore Jean-Jacques Birgé is by far the artist who dives farthest and deepest into the "rabbit hole" [how to translate the "rabbithole"? Labyrinth ? Strange world? ]. Her latest recording, 'Animal Opera', is just one aspect.
In 2006, Jean-Jacques Birgé created an "opera" with Antoine Schmitt. An impossible story to summarize, that of a hundred (! ) Nabaztag "rabbits" communicating and equipped with an "individual" will, two versions of which are covered here, "NABAZ'MOB of V2" and "NABAZ'MOB of V1". Each delivers minimalist ambient music with dark tones and an apocalyptic climax for V2.
There's also 'Dawn at Shimiyacu / Dawn at Shimiyaacu', recorded in the Peruvian rainforest according to the 'liner notes'. Twenty-two minutes of field recordings with the sounds of nature and a minimum of personal additions [no personal additions, JJB note]
Packaged in a bright pink, doubly foldable digipack (bunnies on the cover) with a 12-page notebook in which Birgé explains his universe and his methods of working.
We also mention here 'Tchak' (Klanggalerie) with recordings from 1998-2000 made by Birgé with the trumpet player Bernard Vitet. The latter was also part of the imposing Instant Musical Drama. The other "usual suspects" are also present.
In 2024 the CD sounds contemporary and above all unclassed. A 'twilight zone' containing baroque devo dance rhythms, the weirdest bleeps and effects, oriental ambience, repetitive trance tracks, loungy trip-hop and electro-jazz trash. Is it jazz, rock, avant-garde, pop, or an alternative subgenre? All of this and much more. A disturbing program in every way, with the attitude of Monty Python and Jimi Tenor, but also that of Telex and the duo Suicide.
2025 marks the 50th anniversary of Jean-Jacques Birgé's label. Curious to see what he has in store for us on this occasion. For those who don't know it, the GRRR catalogue is to be discovered as a priority."-Georges Tonla Briquet on Jazz`Halo, translated from Dutch
Includes a 12-page color booklet with images, credits and an essay by Jean-Jacques Birge in French and English.
Get additional information at Jazz Halo
Artist Biographies
• Show Bio for Jean-Jacques Birge "Music composer, film director, multimedia author, sound designer, writer, Jean-Jacques Birgé considers music essentially in the audio-visual relationship, or at least in its confrontation with other forms of artistic expression. Founder of Disques GRRR, he was one of the first synthesists in France in 1973, and with Un Drame Musical Instantané the precursor of the return to the cine-concert in 1976. If his first electronic work dates from 1965, he composes as well for symphonic orchestras that he improvises freely with musicians from the most diverse backgrounds. For his "radiophonic" creations and his multimedia shows (live zapping on the big screen, fireworks, choreographies...), improvisation and preliminary writing merge, the original electroacoustic treatments are integrated with traditional instruments to create evocative musical fictions that he calls musique à propos. From 1995, he became one of the most popular sound designers in multimedia and a specialist in interactive musical composition, seeking to deepen the effects of meaning and develop an ever-wider range of emotions. As part of his work on major exhibitions, he recently worked at the Louvre Museum, the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, the Grand Palais, the Panthéon, the Palais de Tokyo, the ZKM... Alongside around fifty vinyls and CDs, his website drame.org offers 105 unreleased albums (191 hours!) for free listening and downloading. He has been running a daily, activist and supportive blog for 20 years and gives conferences on the relationship between sound and image." ^ Hide Bio for Jean-Jacques Birge • Show Bio for Antoine Schmitt "Antoine Schmitt (born 1961 in Strasbourg) is a French visual artist and programming engineer who revolves in the fields of digital art and digital design, especially in the field of the connected objects. Antoine Schmitt taught himself programming at the age of sixteen on the family computer and was fascinated by its metaphysical and experimental aspects. He obtained his civil engineering degree from Télécom Paris in 1984. He was first a programmer and project manager in the service company Act Informatique between 1985 and 1991, and specialized in the field of artificial intelligence and human-machine interactions. He developed tools, carried out missions and conducted research in the fields of expert systems, artificial neural networks, geographic information systems, and computer vision. He collaborated technically with Jacques Serrano on his work Cigale (1989). From 1991 to 1994, he worked as a programmer for the company NeXT founded by Steve Jobs, specializing in human-machine interfaces for development software (Project Builder) and communication systems (Mail, distributed persistent messaging systems). He participated in the design and programming of the OPENSTEP environment and created the NSNotificationQueue class, which is still an integral part of Mac OS X to this day. In 1997, he assisted filmmaker Chris Marker in testing his CD-ROM Immemory. Between 1996 and 2003, he developed and distributed specialized software bricks (plugins), in particular asFFT Xtra for Adobe Director. Between 2001 and 2006, he was a behavioral designer for domestic robotics products for the company violet (Dal, Dal:Dal, Nabaztag). Since 1995 he has been an independent programmer in the fields of multimedia, human-machine interactions and connected objects, and works with many specialized companies (Hyptique, Virtools, BBC, Incandescence, violet, enero, Kingfisher, Intuis, etc...). In 1995, Antoine Schmitt began an artistic activity using "programming as the heart of digital aesthetics". He articulates his work around the notion of artificial being which allows him to approach the human being and the nature of reality in a new way. A pioneer of generative art, his work is internationally recognized by numerous awards, residencies, exhibitions and concerts. Using programming as an artistic material, he collaborates with many artists from other fields of art (Franck Vigroux, Atau Tanaka, Vincent Epplay, Jean-Jacques Birgé, Delphine Doukhan, K.Danse, Patrice Belin, Don Nino, Cubenx, Alberto Sorbelli, Matthew Bourne, Hortense Gauthier, etc.).[citation needed] In 1998, he published a Manifesto of the work of art on computer which positions the computer in itself as a new medium of artistic creation. In 1995, he created puppetsprite 1, the first artistic CD-ROM, with Alberto Sorbelli and participated as an author and as technical director of the CD-ROM "Just From Cyntha" by Alberto Sorbelli. In 1999, he co-authored with Vincent Epplay the "infinite CD for unlimited music", the first CD-ROM of generative music. In 2019, he designed deep hormone software for the work CliMax with Hortense Gauthier. Since 2011, he has been the author with the musician Franck Vigroux of several audiovisual shows presented around the world (Tempest, Chronostasis, Cascades, ATOTAL, Nacht, Videoscope). In 2021, he created a series of generative and semi-autonomous NFTs. He develops several software and collaborative platforms in the field of art and social life. In 1997, under the pseudonym Georges Victor, he launched olalaParis, the first distribution list for announcements of artistic events in France. In 2000, he founded the portal gratin.org, Research Group in Art and Interactive and/or Digital Technologies, a reference in programmed art. In 2004, he launched the sonicobject label with Adrian Johnson, a label of creative mobile phone ringtones, bringing together 16 sound artists and more than 200 ringtones, now available under a Creative Commons license. In 2020, during the lockdown, he launched the Manif.app platform (renamed weprotest.xyz in 2024) for anonymous online demonstrations on a shared map. His work Vexation 1 received an honorary mention at the transmediale festival in 2001. In 2007, his work Still Living received second prize at the same transmediale festival. In 2009, his work Nabazmob, created with Jean-Jacques Birgé, received second prize at the Ars Electronica festival. He has been represented in Paris by the Galerie Charlot since 2010, and in Berlin by the DAM Projects gallery since 2023." ^ Hide Bio for Antoine Schmitt
1/13/2025
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
1/13/2025
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
Track Listing:
1. Nabaz'Mob Des V2 18:23
2. L'Aube A Shimiyacu 22:51
3. Nabaz'Mob Des V1 22:10
Compositional Forms
Electro-Acoustic
Electroacoustic Composition
Organized Sound and Sample Based Music
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