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Production: Le Labo Espace 2 Radio Télévision Suisse, Faïdos Sonore, Les Voix de Traverse
Awards: 2nd Prize, Grand Prix Nova Romania 2020
Text: Benoit Bories
Sound Composition: Aurélien Caillaux and Benoit Bories
Voice: Yohan Bret

*"You were born the year the city’s noise fell silent.
This hum had absorbed so many details, which gradually began to resurface. Fragile sounds gained new power. Another kind of music came to tickle our ears. It was always there, ever-present, but rarely could we hear it. Today, it reveals its full scope. My first instinct was to preserve traces of it, to make others listen, to make you listen, so we could talk about it. And then for you to pass them on in turn. Perhaps you will imagine the sounds to be inserted, to slip into the interstices left by this world—this world that fell mute for just a moment."*

“Letter to Irma” is a sound creation composed collaboratively during the confinement. It is a letter written by Benoit Bories to his daughter, born the year the crisis entered our lives. Together with Aurélien Caillaux, they recorded the city’s newly uncovered sounds, rediscovered in the absence of its usual noise. These soundscapes were captured at night and in the early morning.

The sound writing of “Letter to Irma” blends a field recording approach with an acousmatic gesture. Acousmatic techniques involve transforming sounds to reveal their hidden musical potentialities, which are otherwise inaudible in their raw state. For example, by stretching the sound of a titmouse, rhythms and patterns emerge that were previously imperceptible. The composition of “Letter to Irma” is an exploration of this acousmatic process.

The text consists of nine chapters, nine sound worlds through which the listener moves as if wandering through an empty city. For each chapter, the starting point was raw, fragile sound materials, made audible by the silence of the city’s usual noise. These materials were then transformed to uncover their musical qualities.

Throughout the recording process during confinement, despite having lived in Toulouse for twenty years, we continued to discover a cityscape that felt unfamiliar, as though seeing it anew.