Sylvie Chenard

Feminist, pacifist, and anti-capitalist, Sylvie Chenard weaves her sociable activism into her music. This guitarist from Montreal is usually well concealed in the city’s underground, but her albums are really worth searching for. She pairs guitar playing produced as very much from Robert Fripp mainly because Derek Bailey to her haunting wordless vocals. She’s selected the whale like a totemic sign of sorts, phoning her various tasks “Projets de la Baleine” — tasks from the whale. After many self-released albums and house productions on CD-R, she released a set of CDs around the high-profile avant-garde label Ambiances Magnétiques in 2002. In the booklet of her 1st Compact disc, Les Projets de la Baleine (1996), Chenard offers listed her primary guitar affects. How embarrassing for any feminist, these were all males. Regardless of, she feminized their titles: Claudette Fradette, Andréa Duchesne, Renée Lussier, Freda Frith, Billy Friselle, and Marcia Ribot. Joke apart, this roaster provides good notion of her preferences and range, with a specific focus on the Conventum-4 Guitaristes de l’Apocalypso Bar-Fred Frith connection. Delivered in Valleyfield (Quebec) in 1957, Chenard’s background can be an amalgam of actions in photography, internet artwork, music, and cultural function, all intertwined. She has the guitar because the early ’80s and provided her initial solo efficiency in 1987. Immediately her strategy included cooperation with other performers (music artists and from various other areas) and a kind of cultural engagement. After hanging out in a variety of parts of the province of Quebec, she resolved in Montreal in the first ’90s and released two tapes, Urgences Ordinaires, Pts. 1 & 2. A offer through the Ministère de la Lifestyle allowed her to generate the multidisciplinary efficiency “Opéra Stase” in 1993, but support was cruelly lacked soon after. Her initial assortment of poems and text messages, Chansons et Chroniques de la Baleine was released by Triptyque in 1994. 2 yrs afterwards, she released her initial Compact disc, which summed up the prior decade, proclaimed by single multi-tracked compositions. Another years she’d explore territories nearer to improvisation, favoring the complicity of the duo placing. A couple of house CD-Rs for social-musical tasks, web art parts, and installation implemented, but she also created the amazing three-CD established Hybride. At that time a fixture in Montreal’s underground picture with ties to anti-globalization organizations, her case screamed for at least minimal acknowledgement. The label Ambiances Magnétiques authorized her, and two albums of duets, Océan ? Vendre/For Sale (with Jon Asencio, a duo task known as Les Cravatistes) and Océan put la Suite (with Martin Tétreault, Alexandre St-Onge, and Maryse Poulin) arrived concurrently in fall 2002.