傾斜的河

kaltemp04

有河 (Yo-he) in Chinese mandarin means : 'There is a river'.

It is also the name of a great small bookshop in Damshui, Taipei County, Taiwan. Appart of its great selection of books that makes people more intelligent and sensitive, its cultural activities about poetry held by the passionate Huang Liang, its good coffee and cheese-cake and its two special owls (Yin-Yi and 686) that won't bug you when you spend your days in their shop, the place is also well-known for its beautiful bathtube.

For its first year of existence and the opening of Yo-He Festival, Kalerne made a special CD-r reissue of Yannick Dauby's vinyl record published by Alluvial Recordings (Usa)  : La rivière penchée 傾斜的河 (which means 'The leaning river').
The original LP dates from 2003 and is now sold out. And the current CDr, limited to 25 copies, is on sale at Yo-he Bookshop.

Some reviews of the original LP : 

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, Germany (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!