Without the Wolves

I said to her: Would you like to be a wolf? A haughty answer: "That's stupid, you can't be a wolf, you're always eight or ten wolves, six or seven wolves. Not six or seven wolves at a time, all by yourself, but one wolf among others, with five or six other wolves."
— Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus*

For two years, in 2006 and 2007, I made regular excursions to the French Alps to bring back mountain sound recordings. This research mainly resulted in two long pieces, one based on the melting of the Bonnepierre Glacier and the other on a storm at Alpe de Villard-d'Arène. Two years after the premiere of Without the Wolves at Festival Futura, the album was released by the English label Entr'acte.

In 2017, Without the Wolves was reissued by Crochet Talon, with a new CD master accompanying the review and the publication of a text: L’altitude du silence (only available in french).

The piece is an extremely detailed montage where short shots are edited into sequences that aim to condense space, time, and information in order to suggest the passage of time, rather than to create symbolic meaning. (…) The most impressive feature of the recordings is the crystalline quality of the sounds: it’s not an easy task to record wind noise in such detailed manner, retaining almost all of the characteristics of the original sounds. — Elliot Loe, The Field Reporter

Incredibly detailed and immersive concrète sound design from Pali Meursault, presenting his second release on Entr'acte. (…) His third composition is also the most impressive, a winter 2007 recording of a storm at Alpe de Villard-d'Arène, placing us at the centre of lashing winds which morph into more visceral, scraping digital textures and metallic drones as the maelstrom subsides, eventually concluding with exquisite, gamelan-like tonal shimmer. — Boomkat

A really fascinating recording with an interesting arc. (…) I got pretty lost in this and enjoyed it a bunch. — Brian Oelnick, Just Outside