Zimoun the magician and his army of small noises
Back when my face looked like a page of Braille, I thought the slaps Hélène gave her boys were real. I remember the dry and violent, “slash” noise, and “han” noise which followed. I did not understand why their cheeks remained pink. I had done the test on my brother, without much success. He turned red and his tears said it all. With age, after hundreds of hours spent watching the “making of”, I realized soon enough that the noises were manufactured without complex and glued to the image. It was all a sham and this disappointed me, I had been conned. The false beyond the truth. Fortunately, the stuntmen were there to raise the bar. Meanwhile, Helen always gives false slaps. My brother, at least, always slapped me for real.
Zimoun has more or less nothing to do with that. This Swiss artist, commonly described as a “sound sculptor” manufactures more sophisticated sounds, refined and certainly most sought. Taken one by one, his sounds are nothing special. Tic tacs, “zwouch” and “bam” at first sight seem of little interest. But when you study them closely amazing things happen. They start off as a mechanism and a relatively complex rhythm and then they start working together, in a bewildering immutability. Their magnitude is such that we literally remain stuck looking at their work of little ants. Their staging is affirmed in the acoustic sounds of a room, a playground or a shed. As ultra-disciplined puppets, they impress with their dexterity and their simplicity. Then the hypnosis starts, through repetition, faster than under a pendulum.
Like a bunch of horny fans, these boxes and bullets, we sing “all together” in their tribune, bouncy and vibrant, with the simple aim to amaze us.
Find more information here: www.zimoun.net
