With this piece, I have been working with the sound material of Western cinema, after its multiple supports : optical film sound, video tapes, dvd and also with sounds that I recorded in cinemas during projections. Originally, my interest in this « process-handling » is the very relation to listening to the motion picture sounds, its clichés, tensions, loosening, sound effects, and the emotional palettes coming out. In the meantime, Lux echoes a reflexion about the process of identification to such actors or groups of population, including a potentially schizophrenic relation over these projections (Hallucinations). My desire, on this occasion, was to support the emergence of psychic images so that the listener would seize different elements to create his own decorations, lights, landscapes. Via this range of acoustic suggestions, the listener would let him be led to the centre of his own interpretations.
The first empirical phase of creation originated in an intuitive selection of musics, sound effects, and audience reactions. Gradually, as a meaningful “colour” arose from these sound images, the layout of comments released a social criticism, through the prism of popular cinema. 2007

eRikm 2003 / Prod.2008

eRikm’s remarkable compositional work Stème originates from deliberately damaged CDs of 1-minute works deconstructed and manipulated in real time.
"Between his reputation as swift shifting improviser, concréte composer and turntable deconstructionist, Marseilles based artist eRikm has earned himself an enviable position in the European music community. With Stéme, his most ambitious and fully realised compositional work to date, he devolves and recontextualises the boundaries between sound source and sound media. >>>

eRikm

Created entirely by looping small snippets of CDs and then treating them in the studio, the newest album from eRikm makes for a surprisingly atmospheric listen. "Correlation I" begins with the expected glitch effects, but as the five-second fragment (taken from a composition by Jean-Philippe Rameau) is looped back on itself at different pitches and drawn out by sustain, it takes on an ethereal character, less like damaged playback equipment than intentional ambience.>>>

eRikm

He lives in the South of France, he used to be a visual artist, and he started his musical carrier as a rock guitarist. He wrote dance music, according to Mathilde Monnier, a well-known dance chorographer. His latest release ‘sixperiodes’ has been published by Sirr records, a lable well known for experimental music. His name is eRikm.
And I, I just listened to this record, true to its name consisting of six pieces, or ‘periodes’. Just to get started, the only musical instrument I was able to identify was a piano. But let’s not drift too far away, and before you read on I must prepare you for a rather untypical review. Since this is the only way to approach these sounds. Are you ready ? Here it goes :>>>

eRikm #

Beginning his recorded career as a turntablist, Erik M advanced over the years to include all manner of electronic manipulation, his work becoming progressively richer and more mysterious. Mono.Face.Mirror, a brief (26-minute) disc, offered one of the most compelling examples of his sonic investigations, piling allusion upon allusion into a huge and healthy sandwich of sound. >>>

ERIK M

I don’t usually quote press releases, but I read this after I wrote the above, to which it adds some balance and mystification. “Frame is the result of a work that originates in the audio CD medium itself : ‘Anomalie numérique et du support lui-même’ (‘Digital anomaly and anomaly of the medium itself’) ; it was produced within the specific frame of hijacking the CDs from the Metamkine “Cinéma pour l’oreille” serie >>>

ERIK M

zygosis, which is his first fulltime recording, starts with a witty beat track mixing high-pitched shakespeare monologues over syncopated jazz loops, and quickly convinces you that the deconstruction of stolen sound material (sourced from cabaret, orchestral music, rock, poetry...) may grow into something utterly personal and unique - most extraordinary examples are tracks 3, 4 & 6. after this tour-de-force, the listener is allowed a short break, while the cd-player skipps through the almost empty regions of track 9 - 22 (microscopic shards of static, lasting only for a few seconds each). those are quickly followed by a very powerful and dramatic piece (agora) that bears an almost recognizable song structure. the cd ends rather quietly with three unsymetrical ambient pieces followed by a short and funny epilogue. there’s nothing more to add, except that ’zygosis’ is probably one of the most brilliant achievements in musical ’piratage’ so far, and first of all - regardless to it’s historical relevance - it’s simply beautyful !