Roulette TV talks with Bérangère Maximin about her solo set at Roulette, the development of her creative practice, and her relationship to music.
Performance date: 12/11/2015
Episode release date: 11/01/2016
Bérangère Maximin’s music engages the listener in considerations of space and textures. Since her debut album, Tant Que Les Heures Passent on Tzadik (2008), she has gradually developed a hyper-personal style, creating sensual, hypnotic, sultry pieces with immediate impact. The electroacoustic composer’s repertoire is marked by encounters that have inspired her writing in various degrees.
She studied under the musique concrète composer Denis Dufour (a member of the famous GRM and a pupil of Pierre Schaeffer). Then, taking inspiration from the New York improv scene and her European tour in solo and in duo with the likes of Fred Frith, Fennesz or Rhys Chatham, her work developed towards live practice, her playing with laptops and midi controllers delivering what she likes to call her digital chimeras. This work led her to compose No One Is An Island (Sub Rosa, 2012), the second and only collaborative album so far, and the confirmation of the respect Bérangère had started to get from established artists. The minimal series Infinitesimal (Sub Rosa, 2013) describes a slow transformation, a deep introspection far removed from the convention of the genre, very special imaginary areas where only matters the physicality of the moment. Dangerous Orbits, out since May 2015, is her first album for Crammed Discs’ Made To Measure series.