LYL Radio is an independent live webradio with physical studios broadcasting from Bistrot Senior in Lyon, Diznord in Paris and La Brasserie Atlas in Brussels with tangible contributors from all around the globe.
For a year now, I have been one of those contributors. My show is called Les Choses, in reference to the novel by Georges Perec and each occurrence is linked to… a thing.
Theme after theme, chose après chose, the idea is to sketch sonic landscapes without limits of style — exploring the interminglings between literature, music and sounds according to a certain sensitivity.
« Even inanimate things have their music », wrote the Reverend Simeon Pease Cheney. In this mix inspired by Pascal Quignard’s superb book Dans ce jardin qu’on aimait, we proposed a listening session highlighting the music of things that are apparently lifeless.
Starring: Saturn, the washing machine and its maritime symphony, the bathtub and its litany sung by sirens from beyond, a pond in the middle of a rave, and the cold sound of the drops from a leaky faucet resonating in a watering can.
This mix is inspired by Wolfgang Tillmans’ photo Weed 2014, an incredible 4 meter high image of a weed, splendid, enhanced by the light and the composition. This image underlines the subjectivity of the definition of what is beautiful, what is good, what is to be admired or not. Wild herbs have not always been considered undesirable, in the past they were seen as charming, useful, virtuous. In this mix, I only used the « weeds » of my collection — pieces that I listened to too much, that I liked too much, that I always found a little strange, of which I am tired, trying to see them in a new light.
« L’étymologie du mot [nagori] se rapporte à nami-nokori, « reste des vagues », qui désigne l’empreinte laissée par les vagues après qu’elles se sont retirées de la plage. Cela comprend à la fois la trace des vagues, ces sillons immatériels dessinés par les vagues sur le sable, et les algues, coquillages, morceaux de bois et galets abandonnés sur leur passage ». Nagori evokes both a nostalgia on our part, for something that is leaving us or that we are leaving, and for something that slightly shifts the season as if this very thing (for example flowers, snow) was leaving the world and the season which is hers against its will. This mix is therefore inspired by this beautiful notion on which Ryoko Sekiguchi writes in his superb eponymous book. He therefore speaks of past times, of seasons, of fragility, of nostalgia, expressed with a particular accent on all kinds of Japanese music.
« C’était le sentiment de la fête, l’ivresse de la liesse collective, le mystère de la dissolution de l’individu dans la foule, de l’union mystique à travers la joie partagée ». This mix is simply inspired by the idea of the party here described in Herman Hesse’s book ‘The Steppenwolf’. It is about the club and the energy of the crowd that we miss so much.
« Sauver quelque chose du temps où l’on ne sera plus jamais ». This set is inspired by forgotten music, music that we have never heard, that we reconstruct from remains: bird bones and carved stones dating from the Paleolithic found in German caves, a piece of papyrus representing a musical notation discovered in the « bin » of the Louvre reserves… This set is about time and about what remains. This was my favorite of the season!
This “emo” and expressionist set is inspired by Coline’s favourite tale, The Nightingale and the Rose by Oscar Wilde. This story is about the destiny of a pure-hearted little bird, a true lover of love. It has been with me for years and I still feel the same emotion thanks to its sublime naivety, its gothic aesthetic and its frightening fatality. In this mix you will find some of the most dramatic and expressive pieces from my collection that serve as accompaniment to the story told by the actress Fanny Dreiss.
When everything goes wrong, going back to basics is often necessary. Choosing the things that make us feel at home, and coming back to it. Sometimes less for the thing itself than for the emotion it invokes. Special thanks to Irene Polimeridis, a friend who definitely inspires me to take comfort. As you may have gathered, things of comfort is the theme of this episode.
In China, there are works of a particular nature called dreamstones. These are blocks of rock inside which landscapes, mountains, clouds, lakes, have emerged spontaneously in the stone over time. The artist is the one who goes into the mountain, slices a rock, discovers this natural painting, is moved by it, cuts out a piece of it, gives it a title. The artist can be the one who shows what has moved him or her, what has upset him or her. The sharing of an emotion through space and time, to allow one to appropriate the world. This mix is a reflection on the approach of a dj, which is similar to that of the artist collector, and was inspired by the atmosphere of my dreams and the strange coincidences I have experienced recently.
This set is the result of the work done for the Horst Festival 2022 in collaboration with the actress Fanny Dreiss. It was thought with reference to its themes: the act af breathing, charms and incantations. The spiritual potential of repetition - through the breath, thought vibrations and through music - is explored as a way to connect notions of trance and collectivity with resistance and political empowerment. The texts : Quart d’heure de culture métaphysique — Gherasim Luca, The creation myths of the Maya and the Ainu, an indigenous people living in Northern Japan, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell — William Blake, The notion of Dreamtime among the Australian Aborigines, Les années — Annie Ernaux and Paul Eluard — ils n’étaient que quelques-uns/sur toute la terre/chacun se croyait seul/ils furent foule soudain.
This set speaks of its own structure of drift and coincidence, which resembles that of W.G. Sebald’s Die Ringe des Saturn: Eine englische Wallfahrt (The Rings of Saturn). Three small, fantastic events in my recent life (a silk-covered forest, a protective moth, a confetti flying the wrong way) coincidentally respond to three extracts from the book. These links jumped out at me by accident as I was initially researching another theme for this set, magic realism. You can’t make this stuff up.
This mix is about sad piles of beetroot whose tarpaulin floats gracefully in the wind, about mould and crackled paint that form paintings of mad colours and stylish textures, about broken windows, about flowers packed in a plastic tray, about the magnificent asymmetry of Adam Driver’s face, about rusty steel industrial landscapes, about grandma’s windowsills full of porcelain King Charles Spaniels, about pretty movements in dirty water, about the folds and blushes of an old person’s face, about all those imperfect or ugly things that still touch a part of sublime. Through excerpts from Cronenberg’s black and red films, Walloon archives, Eva Bester’s questions, the gothic atmosphere of Julien Gracq’s Chateau d’Argol, the cold and contemporary atmosphere of Rachel Cusk, Marcel Duchamp, and maybe a Fleur du mal.
This set evokes a long journey made this year in Colombia. It crosses the dense, intense aspect of the city to the moist and luminous atmosphere of the jungle, its mystery and spontaneous harmony, to end in the purity of the mountains and in the cosmic shock experienced from the top of a snowy volcano meeting a sea of clouds.It includes readings from the two books that marked and motivated this trip — One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and The Overstory by Richard Powers, as well as numerous field recordings, not all of which are included in the tracklist.
This set is a subjective investigation of the Senne, Brussels' ghost river on the verge of being uncovered. It is composed of recordings made along its course, from its origin near Soignies, to the Boulevard Paepsem in Anderlecht, then to the secret closed area of Saint Géry before touching the edge of Flanders via the Buda bridge, between the red and yellow Brussels North water treatment plant and the fascinating Moeraske reserve. The sounds of its flow, its drops, its splashes, are mixed with the songs of endemic birds and bats as well as pieces that evoke, by their ryhtms, their titles, their vibes, the two sides of the river — bucolic and industrial.
Repetition in arts is both entirely ordinary and entirely mysterious.Repetition and music are so intimately linked that their relationship seems almost invisible.Repetitiveness carves out a familiar, rewarding path in our minds, allowing us at once to anticipate and participate in each phrase as we listen. Repetition changes nothing in the object repeated, but it does change something in the mind that contemplates it.
In this episode, I propose to participate, anticipate and contemplate through the following references : the repetition like a broken record by Steve Reich, the repetition of days in the dairy industry (MBeckett) or in the sanatorium of The Magic Mountain (Thomas Mann), the repetition of songs and situations of desperate quests for coincidences in the work of Wong Kai Wai, the repetition of letters from a pressing mother evoking a repetitive life in Chantal Akerman’s News from Home, the hypnotic repetition of notes with Alvin Lucier and Kali Malone, the obsessive repetition of the little boy’s undertaking in Abbas Kiarostami’s Where is the Friend’s Home, the repetition in Jay Bernard’s poetry — describing the repetition of police abuse, the delicate repetition in the soundtrack of the film Ema composed by Nicolas Jaar, and at last the repetition in The Field’s Here We Go Sublime, heavenly and timeless.
Discovering the Cosquer cave thanks to Diaty Diallo, re-watching Michelangelo Frammartino’s incredible film Il Buco and the funny fact that stalagmites were created in Schuman station — these are many coincidences that led me to this beautiful theme, the caves.
In this set: echoes, water drops, Naica the giant crystals cave, splendid radio archives, bats and even one of my fav indie song, the real ones will see the reference to George Bataille (Histoire de l’oeil but also Lascaux la naissance de l’art).
Anthesis refers to the flowering period of a plant. The first part of this set is about blossoming, light and colour. It evokes the elements of a flower, the petals, the pistil and the pollen. The second part looks at fertilisation – the spores that disperse to fuse and recalls the beauty of chance, connections and similarities. The iris of an eye is reminiscent of the universe, just as a picture of pollen under a microscope is reminiscent of lichen. The third part deals with harmony and the state of symbiosis which is the principle of lichen formation, that can be found among things and beings.
Episode 17 : le marais Wiels
Few green spaces appear in the city by accident. Yet the Wiels marsh was unintentionally created in 2007, Following drilling upstream of a future office building and underground car park. The construction work pierced the water table and a pond surfaced, with all the life that goes with it. As remarkable and extraordinary may it be, the marsh is now threatened by a number of construction projects.
This set evokes the beauty and quirkiness of the place. It was created from memories and recordings made while standing in the peat clay of the swamp during a clearing operation and during walks in the months that followed.
Episode 18 : Nepal
This set is a mixture made to condense the impressions, sensations, sounds, chants, films and tracks all experienced during a beautiful trip made this year to Nepal.
Episode 19 : Les voix d’ailleurs
Here is a set about voices from elsewhere, inhabited by ghosts who mean you no harm, cuddly spirits, noisy presences and messengers sent from other possible existences.
Episode 20 : Chance and Internet w/ Rupert Clervaux
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