Project

"My approach to this music is akin to that of a soundtrack laid over a film of my thoughts.”
(Kin Soom Kao)

Pierre de gagné, mucicien

Dragon-off is a personal instrumental music that links electronic (synthesizer programming) and live acoustic music using a layered acoustic weaving method that has instruments coming in one at a time and superimpose into a more complex and dense acoustic masse. In other words, Dragon-off is a virtual musical group in which I play all the basic instruments using a multi-track recording technique.
Happily, I enjoy great pleasure and take much comfort in the much-appreciated collaboration of my musician friends and invited artists.

Christofer Varady Szabo: trumpet on Mystic Chris

François Boucher: Violon

Nicolas Letarte: drums and percussions on:
Viotare, Technotion, barong

The teaching of studio recording techniques, the many years I have devoted to musical experimentation and instrumental research, and my capacity to harness the many advantages those new techniques yield all contributed to the launch of Dragon-off in 1998.
Throughout my musical journey, I learned to tame and appropriate a number of instruments such as the mandolin, the quatro, the dulcimer, percussions, and the Midi keyboard (to play, in real time, the various virtual instruments recorded on a sequencer). Nonetheless, the guitar remains my main and preferred instrument.
From the moment I first heard Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, that project became close to my heart. Released in 1973, the album features an instrumental and symphonic suite that blends styles as varied as rock, classical, Irish folk, and experimental, in which the musician plays an array of instruments at the same time using a multi-track recording technique. In 1975, I attempted my first experience using this style and composition technique in a recording with my then accomplice, Olivier Du Plessis. It was my first instrumental suite of this type and was titled Morceau de morceaux.

BARONG Although different from S.O.S. Constellations in form, the second album, Barong, released in 2007, relies on the same multi-track recording approach and on one added tool: the virtual studio (Reason). This results in each cut being distinct and individual.
More sensual and emotional, it emphasises voice and highlights acoustic and electric guitars and other string instruments, all of which creates a warmer, more tactile mood.
Richer in styles, stronger in rhythms, and less virtual than the first album, BARONG nevertheless explores, thanks to Reason’s contribution, ambiances and rhythmic sounds that border on the techno-pop.

S.O.S. Constellations, the first album released in 1999, is predicated on the concept of a great continuous-flow musical suite in which acoustical and electronic instruments vie for attention on the basis of their particular acoustic texture, all the while increasing in melodic quality through hybrid styles that feature medieval, classical, and electro-ambient influences.
This album transports the listener through different ambiances, as the music travels through time, history, and space, alternating between virtual and acoustic moods, much in the way one leaves the warm, plush comfort of a studio to capture the great outdoors in all its contrasting liveliness.
The effect is akin to that of a chameleon-like dance that adopts the colours of the worlds it crosses as it pursues its quest for artful expression.

With the help of a cleverly nurtured symbiosis that creates an effect of illusion between acoustic and electronic sounds, DRAGON-OFF's Music attempts to find the ultimate point at which the human ear can distinguish a natural sound from a synthetic one.