Huysmans, René Baptist: Embryon (2016)

Embryon (2016) was premiered 8 October 2016 at Le Cube, Issy-les-Moulineaux, Paris, at the second edition of the En Chair et en Son Festival, a festival that aims to bring together acousmatic music and Butoh dance. The music was brought to live by the dance performance of Môh Aroussi. You can see an excerpt of the dance on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33QFAc38_CU Embryon (2016) has a very simple external structure: a wall of sound, slowly gaining in intensity, with a repetitive, rhythmic structure developing into an erratic and idiosyncratic structure of meandering and colliding sonic lines. Internally, there is a lot of complexity and the listener can follow various rhythmic figures until they dissolve and are replaced by other repetitive shapes. It is as if the later erratic phase of the piece is build through various complex processes and slowly acquires its ultimate identity. Just like the incredibly complex and clockwork-like processes involved in the formation of an embryo, be it human, mammalian, reptilian, etc. When such processes are so intricate, we are inclined to look with a benevolent eye on the entity that comes forth from these processes. Yet, the eventual organism has its own character, independent and rather oblivious of the foregoing complexities.