| Pinkcourtesyphone — Description of Problem |
Pinkcourtesyphone — Description of Problem
♦♦ Sound collagist Richard Chartier returns to his Pinkcourtesyphone moniker for this mysterious ambient piece, which mixes strange bits of dialogue and unsettling horror–movie soundscapes into a slowly unfolding, David Lynchian noir that demands obsessive listening. (2014 top releases list of Senior Editor, Sean O'Neal)
Birth name: Richard Chartier
Born: March 29, 1971, Arlington, Virginia, USA
Location: Washington, D.C. ~ Los Angeles, California
Album release: September 15, 2014 / US: 23 Sep 2014
Record Label: Description of Problem
Duration: 68:46
Tracks:
1. Description of Problem (with William Basinski) / More Eeverything 16:13
2. Perfunctory Attachments 11:14
3. Our Story (with AGF) 6:07
4. Boundlessly (for M. Heyer) [with Cosey Fanni Tutti] 18:37
5. iamaphotograph (darkroomversion) [with Kid Congo Powers] 8:55
6. I Wish You Goodbye [with Evelina Domnitch] 7:40
♦♦ Formed from places, plastics, and particulars during 2010–2013 by Pinkcourtesyphone/Richard Chartier. 1: voicemail by William Basinski. 3: vocals, lyrics, processing by AGF. 4: vocals, lyrics by Cosey Fanni Tutti. 5: vocals, guitar sample by Kid Congo Powers, lyrics by A.Lear/K.C.Powers. 6: vocals by Evelina Domnitch
♦♦ Mastered by Stefan Betke at Scape Mastering
Photography: Philippe Vogelenzang / cover model: Evelina / design: Richard Chartier
♦♦ Thank you to RE, WB, MAG, CFT, KCP, ED, SB, PV, JD, and YN.
In dreams: R.W. Fassbinder, D. Sirk, M. Heyer, T. Hunter, L. Lombardi, A. Lear, M. Lewis, L. Meredith, G. Lynne, and B. Davis
© 2014 Richard Chartier. Published by Songs of Virtual, administered outside North America by Touch Tones Music.
♦♦ “I want more… everything… maybe too much…” 
REVIEW
By HC 21 October 2014; Score: 8
♦♦ Two years ago, Richard Chartier surprised the scene with a marvelous record under a new moniker, Pinkcourtesyphone. And it wasn’t only the alias which Chartier dusted off from the many years prior, when he first used it as his DJ name back in mid ’90s — it was also the sound. The haunting melodies appeared to be drenched in a crackle of ’60s vogue, retro fantasy and glamorous din. It was very much unlike the Chartier we have come to expect — the peeled back minimalism of micro sound and ambiance that dominated his signature releases on his very own LINE label.
♦♦ Since the Foley Folly Folio debut, Pinkcourtesyphone appeared on Room40, a label run by Lawrence English, with Elegant & Detached, followed by a collection of reworks from the first two records, titled Please Pick Up on the Canadian IO Sound. The third full length release, A Ravishment of Mirror, came out in February 2014 on the freshly resurrected Dragon’s Eye Recordings, operated out of Los Angeles (where Chartier has recently moved) by Yann Novak. The two musicians have for the first time collaborated back in 2013, on their Undefined release for Farmacia901, so it was a true pleasure to see Chartier appear on Novak’s label. This fourth record, titled Description of Problem, is back on Chartier’s LINE [SEGMENTS], and it’s immediately stronger, eerily potent, and dynamically effective, than all of the above combined.
♦♦ “I have always been fascinated by the mid 20th century. I am intrigued by the duality of that time: picture perfect lawns, ladies in taffeta dresses (while making meatloaf) and at the same time the suburban HORROR of it all. Isolation, neuralgia, boredom. A false dream of perfection… rotting and full of hideous (or perceived as hideous) secrets underneath.”
♦♦ The above quote was taken from HC’s Interview with Pinkcourtesyphone, during which Chartier has also mentioned a few very special guest stars that would appear on Description of Problem. Well, he wasn’t bluffing. Tracks on the album include samples from a voicemail by William Basinski, vocals and lyrics by AGF, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Kid Congo Powers and Evelina Domnitch. This group of collaborators, join Pincourtesyphone’s “party line for obsession and revenge musings and ache all down the wires.” But it’s not only the above names that keep me returning to the record over and over again.
♦♦ Imagine a classy film–noir, all saturated in a pink haze, stuck on a cracked plastic reel, flashing on a loop with ghost sampled vocals, shown in a dark crumbling theater, slowly collapsing with aged fabric recliners, sticky with caramel, drowned in smoke, sweat and sex. Sinking into this man–made echo chamber of imagined future and forgotten past, the listener is faced with a crucial dilemma, hold on to the present or simply let go. Like an industrial–strength dose of an opiate, the world behind the slowly moving pink curtains of this soundtrack is anticonvulsant, hypnotic and dope. ♦♦ Sensual, intimate and seductive — this is a pill that I’d swallow again.
♦♦ http://www.popmatters.com/
Website: http://www.pinkcourtesyphone.com/
Website: http://www.3particles.com/
Contact:
Bandcamp: https://richardchartier.bandcamp.com/album/description-of-problem
Interview: http://reviews.headphonecommute.com/2012/09/08/interview-with-pinkcourtesyphone/
RESIDENCIES + FELLOWSHIPS:
♦♦ FELLOWSHIP . Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship [Washington, DC] 2010
RESIDENCY . Music Research Centre, York University [York, UK] April 2004
AWARDS + NOMINATIONS:
♦♦ Absence for Kraft Prize for New Media / WPA [Washington, DC] nomination
♦♦ Transmediale 2007 [Berlin, Germany] Honorable Mention for Specification. Fifteen
♦♦ Series Honorary Mention, Digital Music / PRIX ARS ELECTRONICA 2001 [Linz, Austria]
♦♦ James Madison University Art Achievement Award 1993
♦♦ James Madison University Best Studio Artist Award 1989–1993
© 2013 Credit Robert Eckhardt
EDUCATION:
♦♦ Bachelor of Fine Arts Cum Laude
♦♦ Concentration in Graphic Design and Painting
♦♦ James Madison University (Harrisonburg, VA) 1993
♦♦ Richard Chartier (b.1971) is a Los Angeles based artist and is considered one of the key figures in the current of reductionist sound known as both “microsound” and Neo–Modernist. Chartier’s minimalist digital work explores the inter–relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, perception and the act of listening itself.
♦♦ Chartier’s critically acclaimed sound works have been published since 1998 on a variety of labels internationally. He has collaborated with noted composer William Basinski, sound artists CoH, Robert Curgenven, Taylor Deupree, and German electronic music pioneer Asmus Tietchens. In installation he has collaborated with multimedia artists Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, as well as visual artist Linn Meyers.
♦♦ Chartier’s sound works and installations continue to be exhibited internationally. His work has been exhibited in the 2002 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art (US), Sounding Spaces at NTT/ICC (Japan), I Moderni / The Moderns at Castello di Rivoli (Italy), Resynthesis at The Art Institute of Chicago and with the traveling sound exhibit Invisible Cities. His solo and collaborative installations have been shown at the Art Gallery of University of Maryland (US), Media Lab Enschede (Netherlands), Montalvo Arts Center (US), G Fine Art (US), Die Schachtel (Italy), The Contemporary Museum of Baltimore (US), Fusebox (US), and Diapason (US).
♦♦ Chartier continues to perform his work live thoughout Europe, Japan, Australia, and North America. He has performed at noted art spaces/electronic music festivals including: MUTEK (Canada), GRM/Maison de Radio France (France), EMPAC (US), Musiktriennale Koeln (Germany), Observatori (Spain), DEAF (Ireland), Transmediale (Germany), NETMAGE (Italy), Lovebytes (UK), The Leeds International Film Festival (UK), The Rotterdam International Film Festival (Netherlands), REDCAT (US), and La Batie (Switzerland) and at art museums including: ICA (UK), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (DC), ICC (Japan), CAPC Musée D’Art Contemporain De Bordeaux (France), Musee d’Art Contemporain (Canada), Schirn Kunsthalle (Germany), The Contemporary Art Centre (Lithuania), Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (US), and Sculpture Center (NY).
♦♦ Since 2000, Chartier has curated his influential recording label LINE, publishing over 60 CDs and DVDs documenting the compositional and installation work of international sound artists exploring the aesthetics of contemporary and digital minimalism. Chartier’s Series, the premiere release on LINE, was awarded an Honorable Mention for Digital Music by Austria’s prestigious Prix Ars Electronica in 2001.
♦♦ In 2006, Chartier was invited by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden to create a sound work in conjunction with the Hiroshi Sugimoto exhibit. Specification. Fifteen, composed and performed with Taylor Deupree, is inspired by Sugimoto’s Seascape series and released on Chartier’s LINE label. This work was awarded Honorable Mention for Outstanding Contemporary Artistic Positions in Digital Media Art by the Jury of Transmediale.07 Award (Germany). A new version of Specification.Fifteen, with a slowly shifting video work incorporating Sugimoto’s Seascapes, premiered at Berlin’s Akademie der Kuenste (Germany) in 2007 and subsequently presented at Issue Project Room (NY) and Torun’s Center for Contemporary Art (Poland).
♦♦ In 2007, Chartier was invited by the Washington Project for the Arts, to curate two evenings of video and sound at the Corcoran Gallery of Art as well as month long screenings at G Fine Art (US) and Ellipse Art Center (US). This program, titled ColorField REMIX, assembled an array of internationally noted new media artists responding to the mid–2oth century Color Field movement and the Washington Color School, as part of a city wide celebration of these historical art movements. As an expanded program retitled Colorfield Variations, it continues to travel to digital art/film festivals and museums in Berlin and Köln (DE), London (UK), Belgrade (Serbia), Prague (CZ), Stuttgart (DE), Seville (ES), Torun (Poland), Brussels (BE), Tel Aviv (Israel), New York, and Seattle (US), as well as at The Hammer Museum (US). In 2009, this project, including exclusive new works, was released as a critically acclaimed DVD edition on LINE.
♦♦ In 2010, Chartier was awarded a Smithsonian Institution Artist Research Fellowship to explore the National Museum of American History’s collection of 19th Century acoustic apparatus for scientific demonstration, with a focus on German physicist Rudolf Koenig’s unique Grand Tonometer (c. 1870–1875), a collection of 670 tuning forks. Some of these recordings were showcased as Transparency, a performance at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
♦♦ In 2011, Chartier curated and designed the new media exhibit Data/Fields at Artisphere in Arlington, Virginia presenting installations by five noted international artists: Ryoji Ikeda, Mark Fell, Andy Graydon, France Jobin, and Caleb Coppock. The Washington Post described the exhibit as ““a sharply installed and smartly edited mini–survey of cutting–edge contemporary art… the works in “Data/Fields” sharpen your senses, even as they blur the boundary between sight and sound.”
♦♦ Listening to Richard Chartier’s work is like sitting in a room at dusk while the light fades. As colours and detail drain away the eye seeks to compensate, peering eagerly at the slowly disappearing surroundings. The fade–out provokes both ambition and anxiety in the perceiver, and the awareness of seeing and not–seeing becomes as important as the objects of perception. Chartier’s work plays a similar double game of seduction and evasion with the ear. — Will Montgomery
♦♦ “On the surface of silence: reticence in the music of Richard Chartier”
from BLOCKS OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE UNBROKEN CONTINUUM — (Sound 323, UK)
♦♦ [With] a hushed aesthetic that shelters a powerful compositional vision. Even when pitched at the fringes of audibility, Chartier’s sounds have an extraordinarily seductive quality. — (The Wire, UK)
_____________________________________________________________
| Pinkcourtesyphone — Description of Problem |
♦♦ Sound collagist Richard Chartier returns to his Pinkcourtesyphone moniker for this mysterious ambient piece, which mixes strange bits of dialogue and unsettling horror–movie soundscapes into a slowly unfolding, David Lynchian noir that demands obsessive listening. (2014 top releases list of Senior Editor, Sean O'Neal)
Birth name: Richard Chartier
Born: March 29, 1971, Arlington, Virginia, USA
Location: Washington, D.C. ~ Los Angeles, California
Album release: September 15, 2014 / US: 23 Sep 2014
Record Label: Description of Problem
Duration: 68:46
Tracks:
1. Description of Problem (with William Basinski) / More Eeverything 16:13
2. Perfunctory Attachments 11:14
3. Our Story (with AGF) 6:07
4. Boundlessly (for M. Heyer) [with Cosey Fanni Tutti] 18:37
5. iamaphotograph (darkroomversion) [with Kid Congo Powers] 8:55
6. I Wish You Goodbye [with Evelina Domnitch] 7:40
♦♦ Formed from places, plastics, and particulars during 2010–2013 by Pinkcourtesyphone/Richard Chartier. 1: voicemail by William Basinski. 3: vocals, lyrics, processing by AGF. 4: vocals, lyrics by Cosey Fanni Tutti. 5: vocals, guitar sample by Kid Congo Powers, lyrics by A.Lear/K.C.Powers. 6: vocals by Evelina Domnitch
♦♦ Mastered by Stefan Betke at Scape Mastering
Photography: Philippe Vogelenzang / cover model: Evelina / design: Richard Chartier
♦♦ Thank you to RE, WB, MAG, CFT, KCP, ED, SB, PV, JD, and YN.
In dreams: R.W. Fassbinder, D. Sirk, M. Heyer, T. Hunter, L. Lombardi, A. Lear, M. Lewis, L. Meredith, G. Lynne, and B. Davis
© 2014 Richard Chartier. Published by Songs of Virtual, administered outside North America by Touch Tones Music.
♦♦ “I want more… everything… maybe too much…”
REVIEW
By HC 21 October 2014; Score: 8
♦♦ Two years ago, Richard Chartier surprised the scene with a marvelous record under a new moniker, Pinkcourtesyphone. And it wasn’t only the alias which Chartier dusted off from the many years prior, when he first used it as his DJ name back in mid ’90s — it was also the sound. The haunting melodies appeared to be drenched in a crackle of ’60s vogue, retro fantasy and glamorous din. It was very much unlike the Chartier we have come to expect — the peeled back minimalism of micro sound and ambiance that dominated his signature releases on his very own LINE label.
♦♦ Since the Foley Folly Folio debut, Pinkcourtesyphone appeared on Room40, a label run by Lawrence English, with Elegant & Detached, followed by a collection of reworks from the first two records, titled Please Pick Up on the Canadian IO Sound. The third full length release, A Ravishment of Mirror, came out in February 2014 on the freshly resurrected Dragon’s Eye Recordings, operated out of Los Angeles (where Chartier has recently moved) by Yann Novak. The two musicians have for the first time collaborated back in 2013, on their Undefined release for Farmacia901, so it was a true pleasure to see Chartier appear on Novak’s label. This fourth record, titled Description of Problem, is back on Chartier’s LINE [SEGMENTS], and it’s immediately stronger, eerily potent, and dynamically effective, than all of the above combined.
♦♦ “I have always been fascinated by the mid 20th century. I am intrigued by the duality of that time: picture perfect lawns, ladies in taffeta dresses (while making meatloaf) and at the same time the suburban HORROR of it all. Isolation, neuralgia, boredom. A false dream of perfection… rotting and full of hideous (or perceived as hideous) secrets underneath.”
♦♦ The above quote was taken from HC’s Interview with Pinkcourtesyphone, during which Chartier has also mentioned a few very special guest stars that would appear on Description of Problem. Well, he wasn’t bluffing. Tracks on the album include samples from a voicemail by William Basinski, vocals and lyrics by AGF, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Kid Congo Powers and Evelina Domnitch. This group of collaborators, join Pincourtesyphone’s “party line for obsession and revenge musings and ache all down the wires.” But it’s not only the above names that keep me returning to the record over and over again.
♦♦ Imagine a classy film–noir, all saturated in a pink haze, stuck on a cracked plastic reel, flashing on a loop with ghost sampled vocals, shown in a dark crumbling theater, slowly collapsing with aged fabric recliners, sticky with caramel, drowned in smoke, sweat and sex. Sinking into this man–made echo chamber of imagined future and forgotten past, the listener is faced with a crucial dilemma, hold on to the present or simply let go. Like an industrial–strength dose of an opiate, the world behind the slowly moving pink curtains of this soundtrack is anticonvulsant, hypnotic and dope. ♦♦ Sensual, intimate and seductive — this is a pill that I’d swallow again.
♦♦ http://www.popmatters.com/
Website: http://www.pinkcourtesyphone.com/
Website: http://www.3particles.com/
Contact:
Bandcamp: https://richardchartier.bandcamp.com/album/description-of-problem
Interview: http://reviews.headphonecommute.com/2012/09/08/interview-with-pinkcourtesyphone/
RESIDENCIES + FELLOWSHIPS:
♦♦ FELLOWSHIP . Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship [Washington, DC] 2010
RESIDENCY . Music Research Centre, York University [York, UK] April 2004
AWARDS + NOMINATIONS:
♦♦ Absence for Kraft Prize for New Media / WPA [Washington, DC] nomination
♦♦ Transmediale 2007 [Berlin, Germany] Honorable Mention for Specification. Fifteen
♦♦ Series Honorary Mention, Digital Music / PRIX ARS ELECTRONICA 2001 [Linz, Austria]
♦♦ James Madison University Art Achievement Award 1993
♦♦ James Madison University Best Studio Artist Award 1989–1993
EDUCATION:
♦♦ Bachelor of Fine Arts Cum Laude
♦♦ Concentration in Graphic Design and Painting
♦♦ James Madison University (Harrisonburg, VA) 1993
♦♦ Richard Chartier (b.1971) is a Los Angeles based artist and is considered one of the key figures in the current of reductionist sound known as both “microsound” and Neo–Modernist. Chartier’s minimalist digital work explores the inter–relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, perception and the act of listening itself.
♦♦ Chartier’s critically acclaimed sound works have been published since 1998 on a variety of labels internationally. He has collaborated with noted composer William Basinski, sound artists CoH, Robert Curgenven, Taylor Deupree, and German electronic music pioneer Asmus Tietchens. In installation he has collaborated with multimedia artists Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, as well as visual artist Linn Meyers.
♦♦ Chartier’s sound works and installations continue to be exhibited internationally. His work has been exhibited in the 2002 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art (US), Sounding Spaces at NTT/ICC (Japan), I Moderni / The Moderns at Castello di Rivoli (Italy), Resynthesis at The Art Institute of Chicago and with the traveling sound exhibit Invisible Cities. His solo and collaborative installations have been shown at the Art Gallery of University of Maryland (US), Media Lab Enschede (Netherlands), Montalvo Arts Center (US), G Fine Art (US), Die Schachtel (Italy), The Contemporary Museum of Baltimore (US), Fusebox (US), and Diapason (US).
♦♦ Chartier continues to perform his work live thoughout Europe, Japan, Australia, and North America. He has performed at noted art spaces/electronic music festivals including: MUTEK (Canada), GRM/Maison de Radio France (France), EMPAC (US), Musiktriennale Koeln (Germany), Observatori (Spain), DEAF (Ireland), Transmediale (Germany), NETMAGE (Italy), Lovebytes (UK), The Leeds International Film Festival (UK), The Rotterdam International Film Festival (Netherlands), REDCAT (US), and La Batie (Switzerland) and at art museums including: ICA (UK), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (DC), ICC (Japan), CAPC Musée D’Art Contemporain De Bordeaux (France), Musee d’Art Contemporain (Canada), Schirn Kunsthalle (Germany), The Contemporary Art Centre (Lithuania), Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (US), and Sculpture Center (NY).
♦♦ Since 2000, Chartier has curated his influential recording label LINE, publishing over 60 CDs and DVDs documenting the compositional and installation work of international sound artists exploring the aesthetics of contemporary and digital minimalism. Chartier’s Series, the premiere release on LINE, was awarded an Honorable Mention for Digital Music by Austria’s prestigious Prix Ars Electronica in 2001.
♦♦ In 2006, Chartier was invited by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden to create a sound work in conjunction with the Hiroshi Sugimoto exhibit. Specification. Fifteen, composed and performed with Taylor Deupree, is inspired by Sugimoto’s Seascape series and released on Chartier’s LINE label. This work was awarded Honorable Mention for Outstanding Contemporary Artistic Positions in Digital Media Art by the Jury of Transmediale.07 Award (Germany). A new version of Specification.Fifteen, with a slowly shifting video work incorporating Sugimoto’s Seascapes, premiered at Berlin’s Akademie der Kuenste (Germany) in 2007 and subsequently presented at Issue Project Room (NY) and Torun’s Center for Contemporary Art (Poland).
♦♦ In 2007, Chartier was invited by the Washington Project for the Arts, to curate two evenings of video and sound at the Corcoran Gallery of Art as well as month long screenings at G Fine Art (US) and Ellipse Art Center (US). This program, titled ColorField REMIX, assembled an array of internationally noted new media artists responding to the mid–2oth century Color Field movement and the Washington Color School, as part of a city wide celebration of these historical art movements. As an expanded program retitled Colorfield Variations, it continues to travel to digital art/film festivals and museums in Berlin and Köln (DE), London (UK), Belgrade (Serbia), Prague (CZ), Stuttgart (DE), Seville (ES), Torun (Poland), Brussels (BE), Tel Aviv (Israel), New York, and Seattle (US), as well as at The Hammer Museum (US). In 2009, this project, including exclusive new works, was released as a critically acclaimed DVD edition on LINE.
♦♦ In 2010, Chartier was awarded a Smithsonian Institution Artist Research Fellowship to explore the National Museum of American History’s collection of 19th Century acoustic apparatus for scientific demonstration, with a focus on German physicist Rudolf Koenig’s unique Grand Tonometer (c. 1870–1875), a collection of 670 tuning forks. Some of these recordings were showcased as Transparency, a performance at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
♦♦ In 2011, Chartier curated and designed the new media exhibit Data/Fields at Artisphere in Arlington, Virginia presenting installations by five noted international artists: Ryoji Ikeda, Mark Fell, Andy Graydon, France Jobin, and Caleb Coppock. The Washington Post described the exhibit as ““a sharply installed and smartly edited mini–survey of cutting–edge contemporary art… the works in “Data/Fields” sharpen your senses, even as they blur the boundary between sight and sound.”
♦♦ Listening to Richard Chartier’s work is like sitting in a room at dusk while the light fades. As colours and detail drain away the eye seeks to compensate, peering eagerly at the slowly disappearing surroundings. The fade–out provokes both ambition and anxiety in the perceiver, and the awareness of seeing and not–seeing becomes as important as the objects of perception. Chartier’s work plays a similar double game of seduction and evasion with the ear. — Will Montgomery
♦♦ “On the surface of silence: reticence in the music of Richard Chartier”
from BLOCKS OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE UNBROKEN CONTINUUM — (Sound 323, UK)
♦♦ [With] a hushed aesthetic that shelters a powerful compositional vision. Even when pitched at the fringes of audibility, Chartier’s sounds have an extraordinarily seductive quality. — (The Wire, UK)
_____________________________________________________________