While working as a radio operator during the first world war, Maurice Martenot became fascinated by the pure sine waves that were accidentally produced by radio oscillators – the stray noises that he heard when trying to find a signal. Martenot, a trained cellist, researched ways of manipulating these faulty signals and, after the war, started building his own instrument. By 1928 he had created the ondes Martenot, a bizarre proto-synth where the pitch of several radio oscillators is controlled by moving the right hand over an electrical ribbon, while the timbre is manipulated by operating a touch-sensitive “lozenge” with the left hand. The instrument’s ghostly, frictionless sound proved popular with a host of composers, including Messiaen, Boulez, Varèse and – latterly – Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, as well as becoming a fixture of horror-movie soundtracks.
Strasbourg-based pianist Christine Ott is one of the world’s foremost exponents of this curious instrument. After playing it in Yann Tiersen’s band for a while, she recently released Chimères, a dark and haunting album of electronica recorded using multi-tracked ondes Martenots. Snowdrops is her electro-acoustic duo with Mathieu Gabry, and their latest album Volutes puts Ott’s ondes alongside violin, cello, piano, Mellotron and the viola of Anne Irène-Kempf.
What’s amazing is how different Ott makes the ondes sound on each track. On Ultraviolet it chirrups like a boy soprano over an astral feast of Mellotron flutes and sighing viola; on Trapezian Fields it burbles over gentle piano and strings. On Comma (a track from Chimères that is interpreted twice here) the ondes shivers over lavish string voicings; on the 13-minute epic Odysseus it provides a guttural, primeval growl that drags us into a terrifying underworld. It’s a transgressive instrument that occupies an uncanny sonic valley – not quite as obviously artificial as a synth, not quite human-sounding, but uniquely and unsettlingly alien.
Also out this month
After homages to Reich, Bach and Xenakis, Tribute to Miyoshi (Linn) sees percussionist Kuniko Kato performing a series of complex marimba works by the Japanese composer Akira Miyoshi – abstract, Bartókian little puzzles that lurch between delicacy and violence. The centrepiece is his 1969 concerto, a 15-minute epic where the Scottish Ensemble’s growling, unresolved harmonies are set against a highly minimalist marimba workout.
The Killing of Eugene Peeps (Gearbox Records) is an imaginary soundtrack written by Bastien Keb, one that recalls, variously, the proto-trip-hop of Serge Gainsbourg and Jean-Claude Vannier, the rumbling scores of Bernard Herrmann and the cinematic swagger of Barry Adamson.
Do keep an eye on the Bandcamp page of the Polish-born, Melbourne-based composer Katarzyna Wiktorski, where you’ll find some superb chamber music recorded under lockdown. There are precise, fin de siècle string arrangements that leave room for florid piano and alto sax improvisations; there are Nyman-esque piano miniatures; and remotely recorded trios whose delightfully hesitant interactions seem to make sense of post-Covid isolation.
