Les Mortes
Benoît Moreau
Les Mortes is a large-scale composition for three ensembles with distinct musical identities. Built through continual acts of recomposition, it returns to recurring gestures and musical materials that reappear in constantly changing forms.
Contrechamps | Speckled-Toshe, 2023, SPT23-C1
Double LP, red vinyl, EAN7640149285192
In Les Mortes musical ideas, literary fragments and remembered gestures return throughout the work, each time subtly transformed, opening new relationships rather than reaffirming what has already been heard. The music unfolds less through linear development than through processes of displacement, return and variation.
Fragments from Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 form one of the work’s underlying threads. Rather than functioning as a narrative source, they become part of a broader compositional fabric in which language, instrumental writing and silence circulate around one another without settling into fixed meanings.
Conceived for live performance and subsequently reconfigured as a double LP, Les Mortes does not document the concert from which it originated. Instead, the publication reconstructs the work as an autonomous edition whose sequencing and duration become part of its musical form.
Side A
Fragments 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9 · 25 · 31 · 32 · 33 · 34 · 37 · 38
Side B
Fragments 39 · 3 · 32 · 1 · 2
Side C
Fragments 4 · 110 · 8 · 9 · 38
Side D
Fragments 11 · 5 · 9 · 34
Benoît Moreau – composition, organ, electronics, editing and assembly
Roberto Bolaño, La Gale, Benoît Moreau – texts
Ensemble Contrechamps
Simon Aeschimann – guitar
Serge Bonvalot – tuba
Laurent Bruttin – clarinets
Sébastien Cordier – percussion
Noëlle Reymond – double bass
Rabasta
Laurent Estoppey – saxophone
David Meier – drums
Benoît Moreau – organ, electronics
Immanuel de Souza – guitar
110
La Gale – vocals
Luc Müller – drums
Christophe Egea – sound engineer
Samuel Albert – recording and mixing
Frédéric Alstadt – mastering and lacquer cut
Ariel Garcia – research and compilation of literary fragments, leaflet layout
Thibault Messerli – illustrations
Laurent Schmid – overall visual concept and graphic design
Recorded live at Les 6 Toits in Geneva on 3 and 4 November 2022.
The four sides of the double LP were edited and assembled by Benoît Moreau from these recordings. Rather than reproducing the original performances, they constitute a new version of the work, in which fragments are reordered, repeated and brought into different relationships.
Fragments from Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666 form part of the work’s textual material.
Benoît Moreau
Benoît Moreau is a Swiss composer and musician based in Lausanne. His work moves between written composition, improvisation, song, theatre and multidisciplinary projects. He frequently develops music through collective working processes and collaborations with performers from different musical backgrounds. Alongside composing for ensembles and the stage, he performs on organ and electronics, both solo and with Rabasta.
The ensembles
Les Mortes brings together three ensembles with distinct musical identities: a quintet drawn from Ensemble Contrechamps, Rabasta, and the duo 110. Contrechamps approaches the work through contemporary instrumental practice; Rabasta brings together organ and electronics, saxophone, guitar and drums; 110 is formed by vocalist La Gale and drummer Luc Müller. Their contrasting approaches are treated as compositional material rather than merged into a single ensemble.
Contrechamps | Speckled-Toshe is a collaborative series developed by Speckled-Toshe and the Ensemble Contrechamps. The editions present newly commissioned or recent works by contemporary composers, reconstructed as autonomous vinyl publications. Rather than documenting concerts, each release is conceived as an editorial project in which sound, text and visual material form a new constellation.