Toma Gouband’s instrument is seemingly simple: a horizontal bass drum, whose surface is scattered with tiny bells, blocks of wood, branches and twigs, and a collection of stones from around the world… Pebbles are rolled on the ground, and in place of cymbals – more twigs and stones. Gouband does not add to this assortment of things – neither a computer nor any other electronics; and yet, he creates music which sounds like the most tender, complicated and delicately nuanced electroacoustic pieces, which at the same time retains a deep connection to the most profound and arcane insights about the relationship between music and the natural world. The way Gouband succeeds in this is through pulse. This entire apparatus is animated by an interior pulsation, born from years of research into the possibility of acting and playing with several superimposed simultaneous internal clocks, several mysterious cycles, from which he creates polyrhythmic patterns, weaving sound tissues which are threaded into beautiful temporal fabrics, intertwined with colorful radiant motifs, governed by rules that seems to have been transmitted only to the most devoted of initiates.
With the support of the Institut français de Jérusalem – antenne Romain Gary