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72:33 minute CD with 28 page booklet, includes 10 photo reproductions
All tracks written | produced by Mark Laliberte
mix assembly: Windsor, Canada, May 2000
design by: Origin Obscure
print run: edition of 500 copies
release date: Jul 2000
essay by: Lorenzo Buj |
Review by: Nicola Catalano
Rating: 8 out of 10
(Translated from Italian
text:) Pillow
Scenes Soundworks 1996 - 1999, faithful sound catalogue of the
homonymous installation based on sound collages and b/w photos supported
by Thames Art Gallery, is the promising CD debut of the multimedia artist
Mark Laliberte. In the sleep portraits of this 29 years old guy, images
of sleeping faces aiming at giving emphasis to body postures, we find the
seeds of body-art and the influence of Wien Aktionists as well as that of
artists such as Dieter Appelt, Joel-Peter Witkin and Cindy Sherman, and
the suffocating assemblages of pure sound-art, uneasiness of industrial
nature, risky concretism that give them sound turn out to be resolutely
cool and free from embarassing ties, although they obey to a long historical
tradition of ars acustica. In the end the work of Laliberte, call it mysterious,
abstract, wandering, enigmatic, difficult to decode, leave here and there
some moments of breath which take the form of twisted and lapidary expressionist
songs (?!) like "Furnace (Dada Chemical, 1970)" and "Summer
Heat (A Moment of Sadness)"; disquieting noir cadenzas like "Trace
Stain (Exploding Back Room)"; and simple but effective pro-plagiarist
cuttings such as "Comatone (In My Dream Machine)".
Review by: AL
Rating: four and a half out of five skulls
Mark Laliberte is a multimedia artist and has been
performing his project Pillow Scenes for four years now. The show
involves a series of photographs depicting various sleeping models, each
accompanied by a unique recording emanating from a pillow located at floor
level. The photos are eerie to say the least, concentrating on dark shadows,
the surreal, and often, the grotesque. Yet for the concern of this review
section, Laliberte's collection of soundscapes are bizarre and disturbingly
haunting: 24 tracks of whispering repetition, ranging from noise to sampling
and sometimes, even music. Laliberte's CD won't be played on your car stereo,
but then again, it wasn't meant to be. Definitely for the fringe culture,
Pillow Scenes is reactionary art against the mainstream, voluntarily joining
the ranks of comic books, horror movies and punk music as a new historical
artifact of the bizarre.
Review by Hal Niedzviecki
The twenty-four audio experiments on this CD span
a three year period. They originally were conceived to be heard in an art
gallery accompanying different photographs which Windsor based artist Laliberte
calls "sleep portraits." In the gallery, the viewer puts their
head on a pillow in front of the picture to hear the related track. On the
CD, the pictures are absent (a portion of them are included in the 28-page
booklet) and the sound creations evoke a less distinct din of murmured interchanges
and haunted atmospherics. The bedroom scenes are like the taut, prolonged
moments from a movie, as opposed to seperate narratives. Still, Laliberte's
ability to evoke a scene simply through sound is stunning. At times, his
project seems almost too successful: put this CD on, turn the lights off,
close your eyes, put your head on your pillow, and you'll wonder where the
hell you've got to.
Review by Ken Taylor
AMG Rating: three stars
Genre: avant garde
Developed as sound accompaniments for a photography
exhibit, Pillow Scenes Soundworks 1996-1999 is a 74-minute
collection of ambient noise-scapes, atonal instrumentation, found sounds,
and intercepted telephone conversations. Photographer Mark Laliberte spent
the better part of four years photographing subjects in different stages
of sleep and recording the surreal sounds that he imagined may occur in
their subconscious, thus creating the sounds that now comprise his 2000
release Pillow Scenes Soundworks. In the music's proper
setting, speakers are sewn into pillows and placed at floor level concealing
a tape machine that runs the separate soundtrack. A functionless wire
extends upward to the wall-mounted photograph to psychologically link the
picture and sound. In the room, voices, instruments, and noise overlap as
viewers walk from picture to picture while the repetition of sounds merge
and collide around them. The phases of sound shift and lock as patterns
emerge. Laliberte's sense of color and composition is masterful and his
visual training shines through in the arrangement of these components. Ghastly,
animal-like moans blurt from a forest, reminiscent of the Smiths' "Meat
is Murder," as Laliberte ties human nature to animal nature throughout
the recording. Pieces like "News Story" evoke feelings of terror
as a news reporter explains the damage done by a fire, while others such
as "A Moment of Sadness" bring about complete peacefulness even
though the dialogue is flecked with feelings of distrust and hurtfulness.
Laliberte paints diverse pictures, from somber and creepy to settled and
content. And considering the esoteric nature of the project - a compilation
of audio accompaniments for photographs - Pillow Scenes is a
brilliantly relaxed and fluid listening experience.
