Note: for all
the CDs from Heïkalo Sound Productions, the graphic design and photography
are the work of Daniel and Tamara
Heïkalo. We offer this service to our customers. The
Ambiance Magnétique CD cover features the imaging of Daniel Heïkalo,
with final graphic design by Jean-François
Denis.
Available on CD:
"Thoughts For My Father" HSP
004, 1993
A critically-acclaimed collection
of intricate, lyrical, and elegant solo pieces, using guitar and cittern.
This recording was out of print but is now available again by in a beautifully
remixed version, and a graphically redesigned cover by Tamara Heïkalo.
Painting
the Yellow Room
"Eagle's Paradise - The Cittern Project" HSP
002, 2000
The cittern is a long necked
lute that has been around for centuries in many parts of the world. The
family includes the Greek and Irish bouzouki, the English Renaissance cittern,
and numerous others. They have one thing in common: the strings are always
at least double, as on a mandolin. The cittern has a droning, hypnotic
and naturally echoey sound quality; in Heikalo's capable hands, this instrument
built by Hugh Blackmer of Lexington, Virginia, can conjure-up an amazing
variety of atmospheres, from the mysterious to the exhilarating, the peaceful
to the downright mean and dirty, as in the wild slide playing of the opening
piece: Gaspereau Delta Blues. An unusual set on a little known but amazing
instrument.
Encore
la Maudite Guerre
"The Art of the Prepared Guitar" HSP 003, 2000
'Prepared guitar': little objects
attached at various locations on the strings to physically modify the sound,
producing a remarkable array of beautiful sonorities. One is left wondering
how one guitar, without any studio gadgetry, can emit such unusual sounds,
from the mysterious to the danceable, not to forget the downright hilarious!
Avant-garde music that does not sacrifice listenability.
Review
from the All Music Guide http://www.allmusic.com
The Art of the Prepared Guitar
Artist: Daniel Heïkalo,
Date of Release: 2000 , AMG Rating: ****
The Art of the Prepared Guitar consists
of 14 short and mostly written pieces for guitar (acoustic and solid-body).
Some light percussion (frame drum, tablas) are also added to four selections.
This CD can be seen as a companion to Daniel Heïkalo's duo album with
Arthur Bull, Dérapages à Cordes, released the same year (2000)
by Ambiances Magnétiques. These solo compositions beautifully complete
the improvisations of the duo while showcasing a more meditative side of
the musician. These recordings span over ten years of work and show influences
from about every musical genre and around the world: folk, blues, classical,
Middle Eastern, etc. Here, Heïkalo does not use guitar preparation
as a mean to experiment, but mostly to enhance the sound palette of the
instrument. That is to say he sticks objects between the strings and the
fretboard, but he plays using traditional technique. Moreover, the music
remains tonal most of the time, structured, song-based, and listener-friendly
— it only sounds slightly strange, thanks to the overtones and buzzes created
by the various preparations. The Art of the Prepared Guitar recalls Rainer
Wiens' Bonunca Dream Music or Janet Feder's Speak Puppet with a stronger
emphasis on folk. "Catacoum Catoum," "Turkish March for 3 Mustaphas 3,"
and "Echo de Melrose Sénécal" provide the most memorable
moments, but each piece is a gem of virtuosic simplicity. The sound quality
on these recordings is irreproachable.
Recommended. — François Couture
Catacatoum
"Dérapages
à Cordes - Sliding Off the Ramp With Strings Attached"
AM 083, 2000
Free-improvisation duets with guitarist
Arthur
Bull, Heikalo playing guitars, slide cittern and percussion, through
the Montréal 'musique actuelle' label: Ambiances Magnétiques.
www.AmbiancesMagnétiques.com
An atonal, pyrotechnically polyrhythmic
experience!
Dérapages à Cordes
was named by CODA critics David Lee and Bill
Smith in their Best of 2001 list, as was Arthur's Solo Guitar
CD.
Arthur Bull, of Sandy Cove, Digby
County, Nova Scotia, has played extensively with Toronto avant garde musicians
such as Michael
Snow, John
Oswald, Bill
Smith, David Prentice, Derek Bailey, and Paul
Dutton.
This recording is getting great
press in the Musique Actuelle scene. One reviewer from the Amsterdam
magazine Vital said: "This one must be a very satisfying result for them.
Great, rich, fresh, concentrated and intense music. Brilliant.
A discovery. (DM)
Review
from
the prestigious jazz magazine Down Beat.
> Arthur Bull, Daniel Heïkalo:
Dérapages à cordes (AM 083)
The Halifax-based duo of Arthur
Bull and Daniel Heïkalo appear as smitten with the sonic possibilities
of the guitar as Tim Brady, athought they work exclusively at low volume,
creating dialogues of rattling strings, percussive scrapes and slithery
e-bow slides. Their open-ended improvisations require close listening to
reveal the full spectrum of sound.
At their most effective, on the
eight-minute title track, the tow can create intense mosaics that ressemble
an Indian raga in both intensity and form, or-on Trente-deux légions
de bilboquets visigoths- generate the tonality and flow of a gamelan group.
But those types of long-form workouts
are the exception. More frequenly Bull and Heïkalo indulge in brief
scurrying exchanges such as the flurry of electric and acoustic notes that
fly on Whatever That Chord Was… (It Had To Be The Final Chord). ***1/2
James Hale, Down Beat (U.S.A.)
2001|08|01
Review
from Signal to Noise, Burlington, Vermont, U.S.A.
> Arthur Bull, Daniel Heïkalo:
Dérapages à cordes (AM 083)
I wish I had four or five copies
of this release to send to my guitarist friends around the country. It
is the type of CD that could easily serve as a dadaist resource guide to
playing the twentieth century's most important invention, one that legions
of string fanatics ought to be listening to instead of the new (insert
name of current guitar god here). Bull and Heikalo mine a free improvising
territory that recalLs the venerable Derek Bailey and the good Doctor Chadbourne
though this duo's approach is certainly colored by interests in the music
of the far east. This could be the blues as seen from the Sudan, Guatamala,
or Beijing, a music that has escaped the harmonic straightjacket of north
american culture though its influences (blues, noise, breton music, flamenco,
ritual music) has soaked through the artful percussive dialogues present
here. Heikalo and Bull live on the far east side of Canada in Nova Scotia,
an area that is removed enough from big city living that the two can conjure
a unique sound, one that builds on their combined histories (for Heikalo,
years of radio and electroacoustic work: for Bull, half a lifetime spent
touring and playing with master improvisers of music, language and theatre).
If you're ever bored with what a guitar can do in the conventional sense,
consider the alternatives these two have found.
Steve Vickery, Signal to noise #22
(Burlington, Vermont,USA) 2001|06|01
Whatever
That Chord Was
Tintamarre
de Boulingrin
Blues
Automatiste
L'intergiboulaison
de Mages Infundibuliformes
"Endroits Inquiétants" HSP 005 released
in May 2001
Musique concrète and electro-acoustic
soundscapes. Multi-layered ambient collages assembled into coherent
wholes from Heïkalo's archives. Real instrumental sections are
transformed and re-contextualized into new compositions. Atmospheric
and powerful pieces qualified as "superior electroacoustic compositions"
by The WIRE magazine from London, UK. The four compositions on this
CD have been sponsored by a generous grant from the Nova Scotia Arts Council.
"Au Coeur de la Cité qui me Hante" HSP 009
released summer 2003
Compositions for percussion with
electro-acoustic treatment. Thirteen pieces, some performed in real
time while others are assembled from segments, samples created by Heïkalo,
and manipulated in the computer and through other sound modules.
The results are a CD of percussion music unlike any others. Guitarist
Arthur Bull's guitar appears on one composition.
"En les Pertuis de la Mémoire" HSP 008
released summer 2003
A collection of musique actuelle
compositions with manipulations from the worlds of electroacoustic music
and musique concrète. Instrumental parts are paired with MIDI
programming, sampling, collage, sound effects and re-contextualisation
of live and studio performances. Several years in the making, this
CD on the themes of memories and the subconcious is a powerful collection
of intense and dense, in the positive sense of the word, compositions by
a composer whose esthetics lie at the very opposite of minimalism. If
you like your music light and spacy, stay away! Once again, Arthur
Bull's wonderful and unmistakeable guitar playing appears on several compositions,
especially on the aptly titled L'Histoire d'Arthur et Daniel, where Arthur's
solos and Daniel's duets with him form the basis of this extended re-contextualisation/mangling/metamorphosis
of their work.
"Deuxième Acte" HSP 006
released in May 2002
The second CD for the Heïkalo-Bull
duo. More polyrhythmical free improv, with Bull on guitar and prepared
guitar, and Heïkalo on guitars, prepared guitars, recorder, voice
and percussion. A more electric release than their acclaimed Dérapages
à Cordes of 2000.
Review
from All Music Guide http://www.allmusic.com
Deuxième Acte. Bull,
Arthur / Heïkalo, Daniel HSP 006
2002Date of Release: 2002 ,
AMG Rating: ****
Arthur Bull and Daniel Heïkalo’s
first album together was released by Ambiances
Magnétiques. This follow-up came out on the much more low-profile
home label Heïkalo Sound Productions. Sound quality goes downa notch,
but this CD captures more of the essence of the duo’s live music. More
fanciful and wild, it exemplifies the dichotomy of these two characters
better. Bull is the calm half.
Sober and introverted, he performs on prepared electric guitar, often using
an e-bow. His playing remains close to Derek Bailey's, although with a
folk touch. In terms of personality, Heïkalo represents the complete
opposite. Scattered between acoustic, electric and classical guitar, not
to mention recorder, junk percussion and
voice, his energy storms all over
the stage. A storyteller in L’Histoire du Valentin Cynique” and a junkyard
drummer in “Le Tintinabulum du Printemps 2001,” he also finds time to sit
down for two beautiful guitar duets, “Râclage à Cordes” and
“Deux Effileurs de Pendrioches Locomotrices” (think of Eugene Chadbourne
and Henry Kaiser’s duets). Bull is the lamppost to which Heïkalo’s
leash is attached and Deuxième Acte communicates this live yin and
yang very well. It will be harder to
find, (try the label’s website
at www.trotbo.com) but if you like Dérapages à Cordes, you
should hear this one too.
François Couture
"When Time is Soft, Your Windows Melt..." HSP 007
2002
A collection of totally free improvisations
using bass or tenor recorder with the added dimension of the simultaneous
use of voice on several of the pieces. With Arthur Bull on guitar,
on four tracks. Recorded between 1994 and 2001, this is Heïkalo
at his craziest best. Unbound, in transe, hopping around the room while
playing, singing glossolalically, hitting objects, floor, etc. Arthur
Bull considers the playing he did on this CD some of his favourite recorded
guitar playing.
Review
from All Music Guide
extraits du All Music Guide http://www.allmusic.com
Quand le Temps Est Mou... Vos Fenêtres
Fondent (When time is soft...Your windows melt) HSP 007, 2002
Artist: Daniel Heïkalo,
Date of Release: 2002 , AMG Rating: ****
The concert flute holds a very small
place in the Pantheon of free improvisation. Its poor cousin the recorder
is almost inexistent. DanielHeïkalo is one of the very few improvisers
to use the recorder on a regular basis. {Quand le Temps Est Mou... Vos
Fenêtres Fondent} (literally: “when the weather -- or time -- is
soft, your windows melt”) culls solo
improvisations on the tenor and
bass members of this family, along with four duets with guitarist Arthur
Bull. Of course, Heïkalo is not your average improviser, he is wilder
than that (think happening freak). While playing the recorder he also sings,
shouts, hits nearby percussion instruments, and dances. The range of sounds,
dynamics and textures he gets out of his wooden appendage defies expectations.
The duet tracks bring variety and contrast, making us realize by the addition
of a second player how busy he is on his own. Bull is a regular partner,
the duo has two albums out. Their level of
interaction here matches any of
their other recordings. The solo tracks “Abrupte Tonsure de Beagle Napiforme”
and “La Danse Finale” stand as highlights, thanks to the man’s unique kind
of craziness: on the first one he talks in his flute, creating breathing
effects, in the latter he stomps around for the most unlikely jig. At times,
tricks like these can sound like, well, tricks, but if Heïkalo uses
them for their entertainment value, he also manages to make them sound
honest, the natural extension of his flamboyant art. Impressive.
François Couture
"Musique pour Guitare..." HSP 010 to
be released in the summer of 2003
The three dots stand for..."and
electroacoustic manipulations and percussion". Several of the pieces
on this CD are the results of having been able to work intensely on the
material through two grants from the Nova Scotia Arts Council. It
is the first of two CDs, the second volume to be called "Musique pour Guitare,
etc. blablabla..." Arthur Bull's guitar, once again, enhances two
compositions dedicated to the wonderful Montreal poet-activist, Alain-Arthur
Painchaud.