"Strike while the iron is hot" could be the motto of this artist; the Stakhanovist, autodidact multi-instrumentalist, photographer, curious and inquisitive in surveying the world he travels and the nights in which dreams, nightmares, feasts and utopias are buried.
The work of Frédéric D. Oberland finds itself at the crossroads of image and sound, favouring a kinaesthetic approach. He articulates different modes of narration, combining the raw character of the documentary form with the transfigured reality of myth and poetry, allowing him to question notions such as the sacred, the monstrous, the fraternity, while at the same time returning to the political news of the present. Attentive to the pulse and beat of the body, his music is willingly itinerant, modulating between the ripples of dreams, watching the points of incandescence and the bursts of electricity that act as revelations of our presence in the world, here and now, its mystery and its violence. It owes in equal measure to the repetitive music, the minimalism of the post-war period (Terry Riley, Charlemagne Palestine, Arvo Pärt), to the formal liberty of free jazz, to the electro-acousmatic researches and to the immediacy of the energetic punk or no wave (Sonic Youth). He is the co-founder of leading bands on the French scene, such as Oiseaux-Tempête, FOUDRE !, Le Réveil des Tropiques, The Rustle of the Stars & FareWell Poetry.
Collaborating with film and video makers (Ala Eddine Slim, As Human Pattern, Augustin Gimel, Ho Tzu Nyen, Karel Doing, François-Xavier Drouet), writers and poets (Christophe Manon, G.W.Sok, Hugues Jallon, Jayne Amara Ross), photographers and visual artists (Fanny Béguély, Gael Bonnefon, Stéphane Charpentier & Temps Zéro, David Fathi, Patricia Reinhart), Frédéric D. Oberland is also curating with Mondkopf the experimental electronic label NAHAL Recordings. His musical and visual work has been released on labels and publishing houses such as Sub Rosa, Hallow Ground, Music Fear Satan, Gizeh Records, Sun/Sun, Flau, Les Inaperçus, In Paradisum, Constellation Records, Gazzar(r)a/VoxxoV, Lowave, Consouling Sounds, Blwbck, Denovali, Fac-ture/Fluid Audio, Home Normal, Slaapwel…
Frédéric D. Oberlans's last-in-date somophore solo album, Labyrinth (NAHAL Recordings, 2018), is a a condensed version of an octo-phonic sound and visual installation created in the basement of the contemporary art space Labanque in Béthune and inspired by George Bataille's 'Inner Experience' and the cave of Dante's 'Inferno'. In an introverted territory, the piece invites the listener to bare witness to the loss of landmarks and to feel then immersive sense of trance ; Labyrinth is weaving a cocoon whose ascending and cyclical pulsations intoxicate, as if under hypnosis.
Text by Alexandre François
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