Jean-Francois Laporte Soundmatters 23five Incorporated CD Available through the Helen Scarsdale Agency: $12.00 The compositions of French-Canadian sound artist Jean-Francois Laporte have rarely emerged beyond of the context of international electro-acoustic competitions and festivals. His only widely distributed piece has been Mantra, which Metamkine published in 1997 through their Cinéma pour l'oreille series. This exceptional work of acoustic minimalism drew considerable notoriety thanks in part to a public misidentification that Laporte sourced the composition on the resonant frequencies of a Zamboni, the ice-resurfacing vehicle used exclusively in ice rinks. With its luminous sounds gracefully shifting between the gentle mechanized purr and excited metal vibration, we can easily forgive those who wanted to assign authorship to an eccentric machine. Yet, Laporte reports that the source to Mantra is an air compressor, albeit one that resides in an ice rink. With the original publication of Mantra long out of print, 23five Incorporated is delighted to present Soundmatters, an anthology of Jean-Francois Laporte compositions including the aforementioned 25-minute masterpiece Mantra. The four accompanying compositions on Soundmatters all share the unique sensibility found on Mantra which balances formal precision and intuitive expressionism, resulting a series of visceral compositions that build upon the traditions of minimalism, graphical composition, and phonography. Here on Soundmatters, Laporte reveals his colossal talents for experiential composition through deftly processed recordings of tumultuous windstorms that would make Chris Watson proud, spiralling drones that he's polished to a Haflerian sheen, the majestic bellowing of sustained horns in the empty cargo hull of a decommissioned ship, and of course the metallic growl of his immaculate Mantra. Given the numerous parallels to Xenakis' smoldering electro-acoustics and Tony Conrad's delirious harmonics, Laporte's work demands the attention as an under recognized genius in the realm of avant-garde composition.