Montrealers Martin Dumais and Julie Leblanc make up the duo AUN, that scuplts corrosive tones and textures to create amalgams of audio-visual experience that resemble parallel worlds.

Starting with guitar arrangements and found objects, together the pair devises tableaus that are at once dense, luminous, apocalyptic, and charged with pure electricity. Coming off strong recent tours, a grand synergy of improvisational freedom has set over the duo.

Taking place during MUTEK 2010, the audio-visual world premiere of “Black Pyramid” reflects the electronic roots of AUN, which were perhaps less evident in past outings.

Video interview

Aun Mutekmag Featured Article

A Live PA with %100 futuristic sound, the trip is the main idea and this keeps the vertigo until the end !

“I became interested in ambient music in the early days of Techno, when every party night had an ambient after-party as a counterweight for the mayhem, the sweaty club rooms and the chemically fueled body workout. For a lot of people, ambient was nothing more than audible wallpaper, but I was immediately fascinated by the ever-changing textures, the stripped down rhythms and tempo and the time and space those ambient tracks imposed on the listening experience. During the last 2 decades I’ve spent an incredible amount of time listening to minimal music, avant-garde, drones… finding out there’s a huge scene of artists who are not afraid of making essential music, essential as in reducing compositions to fundamental elements that evoke emotions and state of being.

The request for an ambient mix came at a good time: wintertime. Probably my favorite season with its crisp air, cosy warmth inside, more dark than light, and the occasional snowy landscapes. I wanted to combine certain tracks that have a strong emotional connection,
music that often sounds like frozen moments in time, compositions that take you from the outside to the inside, from cold to warm. I allowed the majority of the tracks to take their time to develop, to go slowly, at the pace of a glacier… This music makes me think of how a snow blanket makes everything look more uniform, flattened in a way, but more brilliant. And at times it reminds me of how an environment’s sound becomes muffled when covered in ice and snow.”

not much more to add… apologies to everyone down in the southern hemisphere, who are currently in the middle of summer (i am still not used to december being so cold). but for them, this mix could work nicely late at night to cool off slightly…

big thanks to yves for taking the time to produce this beautiful mix. for the moment he is working with peter van hoesen on their sendai project, and he recently started working on a new full album. with sendai he just released a various artists EP on time to express, and there is more to come next year. for more info, you can check his homepage.