Lascaux Urbana (2004) (Urbana 2.a)

Lascaux Urbana (2004)
For multichannel support (5.1)

The musical part of Lascaux Urbana, originally composed for multichannel equipment is a commission by the State of the French Culture and Communication Ministry.

Premiered at Musiques Inventives d’Annecy, Bonlieu Scène Nationale on Nov. the 3d 2004.


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Lascaux Urbana (2004)

The inside and outside of the cavern are the symbol of Lascaux: to kill the animal for the magical representation of sacrifice.

There is another possible inside-and-outside between the hand that executes and the wall. This duality interests me due to the journey between thought and act, between the material and the action, between the making of a gesture and its manifestation.

It is not possible to account for the whole of this reality, fiction or magic other than partially, in fragments and successive approaches. This is what is seen and heard in Lascaux Urbana. 

In this hole of the audition or the Look, the spectator is the builder of the shape.


Cavern – Open Land

The work on Lascaux Urbana has allowed us to begin to see a wider land that is the work itself. 

This work is presented in this way. Their genes foresee that it will form new shapes with time.

music: Luis Naón
painting: Abel Robino
video : Diego Pittaluga
La partie musicale de Lascaux urbana, composée pour un dispositif d’écoute multicanal, est une commande d’État du Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication.


Lascaux urbana
(œuvre acousmatique en multidiffusion 5.1)

The work consists of 8 Canciones and 4 Interludes.

Each part has a “dominant” in the sense of colour, material and tempo.

The recording work with intrumentalists, harp, cello, bass clarinet and contrabass clarinet, are mingled with percussive sound bodies I recorded myself. Synthesis, very little exploited in this work, is confined to the use of physical models, rudimentary and in accordance with the initial idea of a musical universe at its origins. Voluntarily, the instruments and the synthesis are here coarse or redirected.


Lascaux Urbaine IV


1. Percussions résonantes (4’30”)
Opening up to the grotto and the sound that awaits us there. The materials are developed in a slow and contemplative rhythm. The centre of attention and of listening is the space in which sounds evolve. It is an open door into the materials well as the materialization of the sense of time on which the discourse can be subsequently deployed and developed


2. Rauque – Gratté (4’20”)
Coarse and strident material, irrigated by internal rhythms but without, in the classical sense of word, recognizable rhythm. There is no pulstion yet, barring  a few scattered moments. 

Only a few impacts give the impression or rhythm beginning; what matters is the birth of these pulse.


3. Interlude I (2’08”)
The scrapping becomes rhythmic with the accents of frame drum and transformed bongos, things fail into step, the game begins, it ‘s an episode more playful and festive. Quite short; we awaken to the human.in substance that until now appeared quite mineral.


4. Synthèse primitive (3’51”)
The organization of sliding sounds propagates in iterations and bounces at uneven and constantly varying speeds. 

The space is invaded by sliding rotations. Buzzing material opens up a horizon renewed by synthesis. The discovery of a new sound universe brings us closer to those early cavern artists in our quest for the gesture superimposed on walls.


5. Interlude II : Transition (1’18”)
Synthesized rhythms combine with other sources, such as frame drum. A kind of loop springs up, opening the door to the expression of breath.


6. Souffle résonant (4’32”)
Rhythmic. Non -European in sonority, this song presents the incantatory and repetitive aspect of breath passing through a tube – an allegory of the primitive reed – resonating with a world  whose dominant characteristic is the taming of gesture. The resulting materials, low, have a centre of gravity turned towards timbre.


7. Interlude III : Instrument étendu (2’45”)
An episode of straightforward incantation. Sparse in the beginning, a reconstitutes instrument gradually transforms itself into a continuum where speed and repetition are the predominant elements.


8. Du presque rien (Almost nothing) (5’10”)
The materials mingle to form a single layer. An almost niente background. The speakers fade, revealing only a threatening and reassuring space. The quasi-silence denotes presences in the meanders of the stone.


9. Interlude IV : Métaux frottés  (3’11”)
A virtuoso articulation of low breath and skin unleashes long sounds. We stop to watch long trajectories of iridescent metal pass by, which in bathing us in ample space pluges us bach into contact with the cold surfaces of the stones. The interlude ends with a metaphor of rubbed bell and impalpable voice.


10. À travers une harpe  (Through a Harp) ( 3’11”)
The principle of prepared piano is applied to this instrument with its resonant strings. 

The song is i two consecutives parts. The first is based on a principle of repetitive and primitive rhythm, the second, built from similar elements, is pure matter in motion.


11. Jeux Rythmiques (5’04”)
This movement, essentially using many different concrete materials, is exactly the same of the 3d part of  Perspectives (Urbana 20) in a shorter version, and respacialized in 5.1.


12. Résonances lointaines (4’15”)
Only subdued, rich, yet rhythmless sound remains. Here, the effacement of the materials that had been at the heart of the work plays out.

Total length: 43’35”


[ Urbana Cycle ]
[ Solo instrument / with or without electronics ]