The vinyl record is the center of this album, the result of an exploration and an application of a study of contemporary sculpture, sound art, pop culture, inspired by media art and post-structuralist philosophy. This album conveys the idea that we live in a remix culture.

Even since the vinyl was invented as a support of information and art (poesy, music, sound...), it has progressively integrated the visual art milieu and became a material of research. Douglas Kahn, new media theorician, notes that, as with cinema and photography, it took a while for the vinyl record to get its own media autonomy.

I experimented with the vinyl record as a medium of creation and a space of material intervention. The name "Vinylbrikol" came literally from the spontaneous operations of alteration (e.g. cutting, sanding, scratching) in combination with different materials (e.g. collage). The music is improvised and allowed to go in many directions. Throughout the album, the listener is put in a position of unexpectancy about what will come next.

This album features a trio of famous personalities.
First, there is Mad Dog Vachon, an ex-wrestler, and Youppi, the mascot of the professional baseball team, the Montreal Expos. Their pop star status gave them the opportunity to push the frontiers of the fields of entertainment and pop culture. So they got involved in music, the first as a disco-rap singer and the second as the subject of a song, whereby the friendly mascot is painted as a friendly tribal persona. Doug Engelbart, american scientist, is the near-legendary inventor of both the computer mouse and hypertext technology. He made a now famous presentation of these discoveries in 1968. I wanted to imagine what would happen if his presentation had been continuously disturbed by the impertinent interventions of the first two protagonists.

Thanks to my collaborators: Aimé Dontigny, Jon Asencio, Édouard Jeunet, David Turgeon and James Schidlowsky, whom I chose for their open minds and their sense of humour.

Esther B: Turntable & Field Recordings

with

Jon Ascencio: Electronics & Musical Toy

Aimé Dontigny: Casio

Édouard Jeunet: Laptop

James Schidlowsky: Recording

David Turgeon: Mixing