Alexandre St. Onge

The clicking and chirping you hear isn't the crickets of early spring (at least not just them), it is the subtle, manipulated sound of two new recordings featuring Montreal-based artist Alexandre St. Onge. The first, a solo recording on Swiss label Namskeio, is based on the sound source of the interior of his skull (these are literally the sounds in his head), gathered using a microphone in his mouth. The sounds are an eerie alteration of something natural into something quasi-mechanical. Each of the seven pieces are minimal and spare; featuring high, metallic clinking overlaid onto a background hiss evoking large open spaces, or low sub harmonic tones disrupted back static cracks. Rewarding to close listening.