At the initiative of Prelude [coordination center of cultural activities in prison] we conducted a free music workshop in prison [Établissements de la plaine de l’Orbe, Switzerland] from August 2010 to September 2011. These recordings are some of it traces. We decided to make it public, it is a way to draw some lines between the outside and the inside, and perhaps a way of speaking from an excluded place, to another excluded place.
The workshop [2 x 3 hours per week for musicians or not ] focused primarily on an ensemble dynamic, an improvisation language constantly renewed according to the participants and the issues raised by the collective experience. While some tracks on the disc are relatively arranged, others are absolutely raw.
Subsequently, we have proposed to artists in freedom to transform, remix or freely create songs from recordings made with rudimentary equipment in the year of the workshop. We feared that the result becomes very heterogeneous, it actually became, but it seems in retrospect to be a quality of this disc and represent in a meaningful way the whole project.
Immanuel de Souza & Benoît Moreau