Cedriks Bio is this.
Cedrik Fermont is a composer, musician, mastering engineer, author, independent researcher, concert organiser and curator who operates in the field of electroacoustic, noise, electronic, experimental and improvised music since 1989, born in Zaire (DR Congo), he mostly grew up in Belgium and currently lives in Germany. Through his label and platform (Syrphe), Cedrik publishes and promotes electronic, experimental and noise music from Asia and Africa and to a lower extent Latin America. His writings focus on music from Asia and/or Africa: Sound Art in East and Southeast Asia. Historical and Political Considerations (with Dimitri della Faille) (2020), Power through networking: Reshaping the underground electronic and experimental music scenes in East and Southeast Asia (2015-2016), An introduction to electroacoustic, noise and experimental music in Asia and Africa (2014-2015), Not Your World Music: Noise In South East Asia, book written and edited together with Dimitri della Faille (2016), winner of the 2017 Golden Nica – Prix Ars Electronica in the Digital Musics & Sound Art category.
Cedrik has performed and collaborated with artists across Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. He also performs in several projects such as Axiome, Tasjiil Moujahed, Marie Takahashi & Cedrik Fermont, etc.
A singularity of noise music in Asia and Africa.
I read a small four-page essay on the ideas of western society and the alienation of noise music from Asia and Africa. Some of the points made me consider even my own listening habits as I tend to mainly listen to western and south American music. But also why I don’t consider African or Asian countries versions of the music I enjoy.
I also read online while finding this essay about how Cedrik really fights for the awareness of Asia and Africa to be included in conversations. The western world can really isolate developing countries in their work and attempt to make them not relevant has succeeded in the past.
Now the question I have is. Are our western societies self-aware of this? Or just choose to ignore it?
This is not intentionally music’. A Cedrik Fermont Interview
Cedrik speaks on his daily life, working on the label and touring. He is a noise nomad he says, touring the world and engaging in cities he finds himself in. He usually likes to engage with the audience, the organisers and the politics of the area he finds himself in. He finds when touring he is so much more aware of the scenes around the world and in his head he can contextualise this when he researches about the cannon. He finds that a lot of non-western artists are left out of the narrative when speaking about the foundations of scenes.
Cedrik speaks on his love for field recordings. He says they are more detailed than a photo or a film. For him when hearing a recording it can bring him back to the place where he recorded it or even imagine how a place would be like when listening to someone else’s recordings. They are more vivid than a fixed image or film.
I agree with this so much. Field recordings really immerse you within the environment recorded, especially if done with specialisation in mind. I find that it reminds me of having my eyes closed and just embracing the atmosphere. I find field recordings to have benefits of wellbeing if playing back sounds of non-urbanised landscapes.
He also speaks on his music and experimental sounds. He starts by stating that music and performance have always been part of him. Since a young age, he’s sung and played instruments and his projects as an adult has reflected his broad love of sound. He is currently working on numerous projects under different aliases with different genres. He likes to experiment. He doesn’t want to copy what other people do and to him, breakcore was total freedom. He could do anything to an extent add jazz or punk. Make it political or a parody. Or just have fun.
I respect his views on creating, after all when one is making art. I feel it’s a separation between the logical thought driven process and the free creative left part of the brain. I can understand his views completely and I am really interested in his music. I’m going to find some to listen to.
Détails – Cedrik Fermont
https://syrphe.bandcamp.com/album/d-tails
Cedrik describes this album as a different approach than his current workings. Since 1989 he has used acoustic sounds in his work although mostly electronic, this album is the first solo album where it has been mainly acoustic sounds and a few electronic.
Passage, the first track made me feel like I was in a dark cave system. The rolling sound which panned around the headphones gave me a sense of space and rhythm alongside the sub frequencies coming in. I liked the continuous sounds playing the rolling feedback tones. I could sense his curiosity about sound through this song as it was all acoustic.
Détails, the second track. I found the horror type noises to bring my awareness back to myself. In noise tracks, I find to drift away and embrace the environment that’s being created. Mainly a lot of noise music tends to abuse the idea of noise and go all into the loudness and extremes. Cedrick’s piece in this really does touch on that but has considerable self-awareness shown in his production. The sounds although still noise, ease your ears and thoughts into this environment that slowly feels like it consumes you.
Post Lecture Reflection
He begins his lecture by stating it’s important for him that in his bio it states hes from Congo. It’s something that he is proud of and wants people to know. Cedrik Grew up in Belgium and in his area/scene, he was the only brown kid in electronic music. He would ask himself why no one else was interested in this music that looked like him and he couldn’t understand. He then starts listening to alternative electronic music in 1986, he was 14. In 1989 he started his first band still in while still in Belgium. 1991 he started a tape label with no money, no internet. It was different, There was a Mail art network to trade and buy and sell cassettes or vinyl. And this is how he would discover alternative music.
He then started getting more music that was electro-acoustic from his mail network. mostly from northwest Europe and north America, hardly anywhere else. Nothing from Africa, Latina America, Asia. Even from eastern Europe. It was very difficult, especially without the internet. For these places to not have a scene it can’t be true he says. There must be people in these places
He then started making flyers in envelopes of tapes he shipped. On the flyer, he would state that he wanted people in whatever country, Africa Asia etc to submit for compilation. It would take months later to get an answer this was due to no internet. Reaching people outside of popular locations was difficult. and he then went on to release a few popular compilations.
Cassette human archives vol 1. Global alternative electronic, improvised music, noise compilation was the first one. And looking back, it was not really global in regards to what happens now. But back then it was difficult. In the first compilation, there were twenty-five artists, mostly from Europe in this compilation. Not enough from other places and although he was happy he couldn’t find more Asian & Africa.
In the early 2000s, affordable, accessible internet arrived which allowed him the opportunity to dive way more into his research and although it still took him a while because there was not enough information available on an academic or independent level.
Cedrik studied electroacoustic music in Belgium in the late 1990s, one module was the history of electroacoustic music with artists such as Pierre Schaeffer and it continued on. But to him, It felt odd. There must have been people before that for example John cage. Or from other countries. He had heard about Egyptian composers and none were mentioned. So because this history module existed, it gave him questions which he pursued.
So thanks to the internet, he managed to discover much more than what was written in most books. He went on and on with ongoing research and the internet made getting Access to music from non-western countries much easier. Soul seek was dedicated to electronic music and alternative music in general, it was a file sharing software. Some people sharing files were not westerners, but from places like Thailand, China. And these people had a huge collection of music, music from their surroundings and also western music.
He had a chat with someone from china, who had a huge collection of experimental and industrial music from western society. So this made him realise that in china they know what the western world is doing in regards to music, but we in the western world don’t know about what they are up to.
So on this platform, there were people sharing punk music from Iran and Thailand. You could buy and swap music and he started buying from there but this was not always well distributed. People didn’t know this music existed and the best way for him to start publishing these compilations he had been working on ways to go there as much as he can.
In 2003 he goes to Istanbul, he thought there must be people doing alternative music electro etc in turkey, so he somehow found noise / experimental noise concerts in turkey. So that’s the first step for himself. He stayed about a week in Istanbul and performed there. It was difficult as he got kicked out by a venue owner who said it’s not music what he’s performing and it was scaring customers away.
In Turkey, He performed for 20-25 people. It was all breakcore/noise music, a lot of those attendees were musicians and they would stay after the show and talk and share their music through CDR & cassettes. They would say that no one comes here, you are one of the first ones, but to Cedrik it was very odd, its connected to Europe and it’s not that far away to be this isolated.
So in 2004, he goes Thailand. On Soulseek, he got in touch with someone from Thailand. So he wrote, hey is anyone interested in booking me for a show in Thailand, I’m going to Bangkok. So he managed to get booked in an art gallery with other people. Most people who attended the concert never heard this music, and out of curiosity came and listened.
Bang the name of the organiser said if he wanted to go to Vietnam he could put him in touch with people. So Cedric flew for 6 months in south-east / east Asia, to perform and meet as many people/artists as possible and to see if he could find sound arts and experimental music and so on. He brought 70 records, tapes and CDs back home.
Once he returned he published the compilation two years later, that included artists from Asia and the middle east and Africa where he went a bit later. He wanted it to be an archive as he had never found any collection of so-called electronic and experimental music from Asia and Africa. No one had published something like this before, and there were previous compilations in the 70-the 80s of electroacoustic music. But they always had big named composers and to him with his compilation, he felt it was a very important archive. It was important to him because people said it was a waste of time to go visit these places. Saying he would find nothing but he did.
So for him, this was an important document, this compilation was called, Beyond ignorance and borders. It was ignorance to pretend no one outside the west was making this music. So all this pushed him to document and travel as much as he could, unfortunately not filming as he couldn’t afford it. But he would take notes, and interview where possible.
So now Cedrik runs a radio show and his label releases compilations and albums of artists from Asia and Africa. So he’s been accumulating an insane amount of documents and above all thanks to the internet.
His huge document and archives have led him into deeper questions and to find out why it’s so own known and isn’t a part of history. Why isn’t it taught in universities art centres etc? To him it’s the same old story, the west has colonised and written off a huge part of the history of people that aren’t western. And we need to update this history of sound arts & electro-acoustic etc.
In the twenty-first century, we can’t pretend that we can’t access this information. So he’s made his own database, not the easiest. But he started many years ago and when he put it online it only contained only a few hundred references. So he got a lot of responses from people telling him, hey this person is missing. So it pushed him to go further.
I found Cedriks lecture engaging and very much authentic to himself. Sometimes there can be a feeling I assume for these practitioners to be aware of what they are communicating. Perhaps to reframe themselves to an academic setting and dilute their topic for the sake of academia. I really enjoyed Cedriks lecture and found it at times making me question what I do in my own practice and my listening habits.