In Relic Radiation, Ben Bertrand continues his exploration of how sound can bend time, space, and emotion into subtle but seismic forms. Anchored by the bass clarinet and animated by electronics, this latest release on Stroom conjures a world where cosmic phenomena echo personal loss, and where melancholia becomes a lens for beauty rather than sorrow. Composed in solitude at a Slovakian water mill and inspired by everything from the relic light of the Big Bang to the literary weirdness of Thomas M. Disch, the album pulses with a stillness that’s never static.
I sat down with the Brussels-based composer to discuss how he sculpts sound like soft architecture, navigates the blurred line between improvisation and structure, and why sadness might be our most underrated window into wonder. What follows is a slow-motion orbit through Bertrand’s thoughtful process – a transmission from somewhere between deep time and deeper listening.
Chain D.L.K.: Hi Ben! How are you doing?
Ben Bertrand: Hi Chain DLK. All good here. Happy to have released this new album. I’m going back to work on new projects: music for an installation and composing a piece for ensemble and electronics.
Chain D.L.K.: The track titles like “Microwave Background” and “Event Horizon” evoke cosmic themes. What drew you to these astronomical concepts, and how do they inform the album’s narrative?
Ben Bertrand: I always find the titles of my music when all is recorded, and I wanted to dedicate this music to my father, who passed away. I began to search for a title that is not only linked to grief, I found that relic radiation was a nice name for this album. The relic Radiation is the oldest light in the universe, a faint afterglow from the Big Bang. It is microwave radiation that permeates all space and provides crucial insights into the early universe. It is cosmically linked, and the term relic radiation suits the feeling I have with my grief: you still feel the presence of somebody when this person is not there anymore.
Chain D.L.K.: Composed during your residency at the Slovakian National Gallery’s water mill, how did this unique environment influence the textures and moods of Relic Radiation?
Ben Bertrand: The place is peaceful and calm. I arrived there with some sketches and some ideas. Staying in this place permitted me to put all my ideas in order and to link them one with another. This calm and lost place in the middle of Slovakia permitted me to focus on the composition and on the long form of the album.
Chain D.L.K.: The album references Thomas M. Disch’s “The Puppies of Terra”. How does this literary work resonate with the themes you explore musically?
Ben Bertrand: Rafael Severi, who wrote the description text of this album, found that this text worked well with my music. I spent time with Rafael one year ago at the Meakusma festival, and we spoke about literature. At this moment, I was reading a lot of Philip K. Dick novels. I appreciate this author because he puts you in a world without explaining to you the way it works. You only begin to understand how those worlds work while reading the story, without having all the elements. I like this way of doing the narration. And as we had this discussion about Philip K. Dick, Rafael thought about Thomas M. Disch to describe this album.
Chain D.L.K.: You’ve described the album as “melancholy, not melancholy”. Can you delve into this duality and how it manifests in your compositions?
Ben Bertrand: I think that melancholy is a door that leads you to beauty and not only to sadness. Sadness may help us to see beauty, because in this state, you lose your defenses.
Chain D.L.K.: The album balances familiarity with distance. How do you achieve this interplay between the intimate and the alien in your soundscapes?
Ben Bertrand: I try to focus on the music (harmony, melody) and on the soundscapes too. I like to add some strangeness in something that could be only beautiful to make it more interesting.
Chain D.L.K.: Your work reimagines the bass clarinet’s role in contemporary music. How has your relationship with the instrument evolved?
Ben Bertrand: When I began to work with electronics, I used mainly the effects in an orchestration way : it permitted me to only work with the bass clarinet and have different kinds of sounds. Now, I try to find a way to interact with the electronics and use it as an instrument in itself that opens the field of possibilities.
Chain D.L.K.: What challenges and rewards come with blending acoustic clarinet tones with electronic processing?
Ben Bertrand: The bass clarinet and clarinet serve as the album’s sole sound sources. At times, electronics obscure their recognizable timbre, but beyond mere orchestration, I treat electronics as an instrument in its own right, engaging in dialogue with the clarinet. By processing an entirely acoustic instrument through electronics, I aim to humanize electronic sound while expanding the expressive possibilities of the clarinet.
Chain D.L.K.: Your compositions often feature layered loops. How do you approach building these layers to maintain coherence and interest?
Ben Bertrand: I employ multiple unsynchronized loopers, each running independently, generating a constantly shifting and evolving sonic landscape. This technique results in a repetitive yet never-static sound world, where patterns continuously transform.
I use them sometimes as modern tape loops: I record a silent loop and then long tones with delay, which allow multiple layers to emerge and interact organically. This process creates intricate sonic phenomena, such as beating frequencies and resulting tones, that arise naturally from the overlapping sounds.
Chain D.L.K.: Where do you draw the line between structured composition and improvisational exploration in your pieces?
Ben Bertrand: I improvise a lot while I’m looking for new materials during the compositional process. When I’ve finished a composition, I normally know what I will play loosely: I see more a composition as a frame in which I will express myself than a strict text that I have to repeat. I love playing shows at this point, because it makes my set evolve: I begin to take more liberty and improvise more. So we can see my process as follows: first, improvising to find new ideas, then playing the music following the composition, and finally going back to more improvisation on stage when the music becomes really familiar to me and easy to play.
Chain D.L.K.: Are there specific software or hardware tools that have become indispensable in your creative process?
Ben Bertrand: I am using the Eventide H9 and H90 a lot: they permit me to find new sonic landscapes.
I love using loopers in different ways, as I’ve explained before.
Furthermore, I use different kinds of delays, with those, I can, for instance, play rhythmic patterns on the clarinet that interact with delays, new, richer rhythmic structures will unfold dynamically.
Chain D.L.K.: You’ve worked with artists like Christina Vantzou. How do collaborations influence your solo work, and what do you seek in a collaborative partner?
Ben Bertrand: Collaborations permit me to open my sonic vocabulary. For example, working with Christina permitted me to understand how to make more powerful a simple music idea more powerful and how to develop it interestingly.
Chain D.L.K.: “Relic Radiation” is released on Stroom. How has your relationship with the label shaped the presentation and distribution of your music?
Ben Bertrand: It’s a pleasure to work with them. They are taking charge of my management. We work together on a lot of subjects. They give me the possibility to create my music and to put it in the sphere where we think it has to be present.
Chain D.L.K.: How does performing live inform your studio recordings, and vice versa?
Ben Bertrand: At the moment, most of my records are recorded in a way it’s possible to play them live afterwards. Now that I begin to have more experience, I begin to understand how production permits me to create. I think that in the coming time, I will begin to record albums that will use more of those possibilities.
Chain D.L.K.: What role does audience feedback play in your ongoing artistic development?
Ben Bertrand: Audience feedback is a nice moment in my sometimes solitary process. It is super nice to hear what people think about my music and to know that your music is listened to and has an impact. It gives meaning to my solitary artistic journey.
Chain D.L.K.: How do you engage with the experimental music community, both locally in Brussels and internationally?
Ben Bertrand: I love going to concerts. I try to listen to live music several times a week when it’s possible. I do some radio shows on Kiosk radio and on Lyl Radio in Brussels. I try to play with the musicians of the scene here in Brussels and to meet the people sometimes only to drink a coffee and discuss what we are doing and how we compose and organise ourselves.
Have a check here:
https://kioskradio.com/label/ben-bertrand
https://lyl.live/show/ben-bertrand
Chain D.L.K.: Your music often alters the listener’s sense of time. Is this a deliberate intention, and what do you hope listeners experience in this temporal shift?
Ben Bertrand: For me, music is above all a place, like a real physical place that is built in the mind while listening to the music. This is maybe why my music could interfere with the impression of time.
Furthermore, time is the medium of music (and space too). For me, as a musician, it implies several time scales: the daily musical practice during years, the long process of composition, the duration of a show or the duration of a track that it’s recorded. I think that you can maybe listen to this long process of composition and maturation while listening to a single track, and that’s maybe why it interferes with our feeling of the passing time.
Chain D.L.K.: How do you navigate conveying complex emotions that resist easy categorization in your compositions?
Ben Bertrand: I spend a lot of time on my compositions and on playing them. I try to find beauty and to add something rare to it. During the composition process, when I begin to arrive at an acceptable result in my opinion, I begin to simplify and to try to find the essence of my ideas by removing all that is unnecessary.
Chain D.L.K.: The artwork for “Relic Radiation” is striking. How important are visual elements in complementing and enhancing your music?
Ben Bertrand: We worked with Stroom and Victor Verhelst for the last cover. I’m really happy about it.
I normally send the music to the artist who will do the artwork, and I prefer to let this person be free of the creation: I don’t say or ask for anything. Normally, the artist will work on the cover while listening to the album. We discussed details at one point, but it seems that this method worked well till now: I love the visuals of my albums.
Chain D.L.K.: You draw from traditional and ancestral music. How do these influences integrate into your contemporary compositions?
Ben Bertrand: I study and analyze a lot of kinds of music. I like to understand the recipes that some composers use. When I understand how it works, I like to use recipes from several genres/eras and to use them in another context. For example, I use a compositional method of Morton Feldman that I will use with another method of Arvo Part, on which one I will try to play in an interactive way with a delay. In one word, I often mix a lot of different influences, and I use them in a single track.
Chain D.L.K.: Looking ahead, are there new sonic territories or conceptual themes you’re eager to explore in your upcoming projects?
Ben Bertrand: I’m working at the moment on a piece for an installation that will include choreography and videos.
At the same time, I begin to work on a big piece for ensemble and electronics, in which I’d like to use the interaction of the instruments and the electronics to reveal the physical properties of sound through layered, evolving textures.
Visit Ben Bertrand on the web:
https://benbertrand.bandcamp.com/
https://soundcloud.com/ben-bertrand-bxl
