Alluvial’s newest release comes from French composer Yannick Dauby. Yannick may be best known for his collaborative work with mnortham (entrelacs) and Thomas Köner. We asked Yannick to do something for us in 2003, and what resulted is la rivière penchée. La rivière penchée is located near his home in Lyon. From what he has told me, there is a rock shelter-like structure on one of the banks of the river where he decided to collect these recordings. We have the pleasure of hearing richly textural compositions made up of recordings taken at the rivers’ banks, the manipulation of found objects, and some electronic elements. As one might expect,
the record reflects a snapshot of a place-running water, stones, soil, metallic timbres, wind, rain, and even bats- all electronically altered so the sounds become something recognizable, but different. He has woven these sounds together into six pieces that span about 40 minutes. For some reason, we felt that the music found here is best suited for vinyl. Perhaps it is the organic quality of what Yannick does. The LP is on .180 gram black vinyl and housed in a gorgeous matte finished gatefold sleeve. Photography is from Yannick, and the front cover drawing is by Wanshuen Tsai. Strictly limited edition to 280 copies. (Above photo by Dauby)

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Reviews

Vital Weekly 429, Netherlands, Frans de Waard
A small group of people concentrate on bringing drone music finding it's origin in field recordings as well as close miked recordings of controlled action, like rubbing wooden sticks or leaves. Mnortham, Seth Nehil, JGrzinich, Olivia Block and Yannick Dauby (or Jeph Jerman, Small Cruel Party and Giancarlo Toniutti to mention the older lot among them) are a few of them. Sometimes they work together on collaborative efforts. Yannick Dauby has released various works with
Mnortham (as Entrelacs, a 7" on Drone Records) and one 3"CDR for And/Oar with Christophe Havard and several solo works. On this LP he is strictly concerned with field recordings and hand manipulated sounds. Electronic sounds don't seem to be playing a big role on this record, save maybe for some equalization of sounds. Bird calls are being looped and wind chimes recorded out doors. This kind of music is usually dense, hence the fact that it's part of the drone
world, but also acoustic sounding, with more open ended sounds. The minimal aspect, almost frozen like a picture, is of course always present in this kind of music. Now I come to think of it, the artwork of this LP (and other releases of this kind of music) contains usually close up of
landscape elements and resemble the music quite well. Yannick Dauby succeeded in producing a more than excellent LP, which fit a small but strong tradition.

Wire #248 October 2004, UK,  (Jim Haynes)

(a joint review with the "Low Valley" CD on edition)

French sound artist Yannick Dauby describes his work in highly theoretical terms as a convergence of recording/playback technologies reflecting the natural soundscape.  Dauby embraces the decontextualization which occurs for all sound production, not just field recordings.  He attempts to emphasis technology's artificial constructs without sacrificing the natural sound quality from the source material.  This methodology places Dauby in good company alongside Giancarlo Toniutti, Francisco Lopez, John Hudak, and mnortham, who has occasionally collaborated with Dauby.  The very quiet Low Valley is one of two albums from Dauby to be published almost simultaneously.  Its marked by whispers of gestural activity with the crackling of leaves and grains of sand being pushed around, accompanied by field recordings of rain and water situated far in the distance.  La Riviere Penchee is considerably more active, with his numerous scrabblings evolving into dense hissings against electronic drones. 

Auf Abwegen #35, Winter 2005 (Till Kniola)

Yannick Dauby schliesslich komponiert seine Feldgerausche derartig stark durch, dass von vornherein klar wird, dass die aussenwelt vor allem als akustische Basis herhalten soll.  Nicht klar ist, ob Dauby die auf der wunderbar gestalteten LP (Klappcover!) nicht sogar selbst erst erzeugt hat, durch zum Beispiel Kettenrasseln oder Metallschaben.  Unter den fragil knisternden Sounds liegt oft ein leicht schwebend-kreiselndes Gerausch, dass das ganze aus dem Strom schierer Alltagsgerausche heraushebt.  Wunderbar!