Repertoire Manu Louis

Wild, diagonal songs about animals, kermesse and internet
For people who like Zappa, David Byrne or an alternative version of Stroma in a parallel universe
Manu Louis plays the guitar, percussions and sings

Repertoire Sylvain

For people who like Philip Glass, David Sylvian or Max Richter
Sylvain plays harmonium, guitar and percussions

the journey of zero carbon records

Can the music industry really take into account the ecological emergency?

If so, how should it reinvent itself?

These are the questions that we are asking with the Zero Carbon Records project.

In order to implement a music practice in phase with the reality of environmental issues, it is

necessary sooner or later to face a colossal problem: to eliminate its dependence on fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas), massive CO2 emitters. And this, in a society that totally relies on the use of these energies.

In 2020, hydrocarbons provided about 84% of the world's energy: 33.1% for oil, 27% for coal,

24.2% for gas. The rest comes from hydroelectricity (6.4%), wind and solar (5%) and nuclear (4.3%).

The ecological need to stop greenhouse gas emissions therefore implies more than a sobriety effort. It requires a profound rethinking of our way of operating - including, of course, in the music industry. For avoiding fossil fuels will mean living without oil (the energy used for transportation) and almost without full-time electricity (electricity production has a very large ecological footprint and relies heavily on hydrocarbons: see appendix).

How to practice music today without oil and electricity? Is it simply possible?

If the music industry wants to take into account the need to reduce human impacts on its environment, it should probably eventually stop being an industry.

A professional music practice without fossil fuels would imply this:

- Decarbonized transportation for musicians and audiences

- End of streaming and downloading audio and video

- End of record production

- Concerts without amplification powered by an electrical network

In short: no more and no less than giving up recorded music, the use of machines and fast travel at will... It is thus a total changeover, a true reinvention.

A LABEL WITHOUT ELECTRICITY AND OIL

What is left of the professional music practice without carbon emission?

The recorded music is then abandoned because it relies on technology and machines (thus on a

strong energy consumption) at all its stages. In its place is operated an exclusive return to music

played live in the presence of an audience.

The concept:

The musicians travel to play their repertoire in public. They travel alone using a cargo bike (a bicycle with a front tray for carrying luggage). Tours are initially planned in Europe, starting from the artist's home town. Duration à la carte: between 1 week and 1 month. Each concert takes place without amplification or power supply, and the music has been thought out and created beforehand for such a context. The local audience is invited and encouraged to travel to the concert venue without a motorised vehicle: by bicycle or on foot.

Thus, no consumption of hydrocarbons (neither oil, nor gas, nor coal), and therefore no CO2

emissions, is necessary either for the musicians' travels or for their public performances.

The music produced in this context will not be recorded either in audio or in video (again to avoid

greenhouse gas emissions linked to the powering of the machines and the digital network)

Who are we?

Zero Carbon Records is created by musicians Manu Louis and Sylvain Chauveau. Both have no

background in any ecological or political movement. They don’t do any sport neither. For both of them, realizing that a long-term sustainable musical practice would involve renouncing to recorded music and to travel only with the strength of their muscles is a terrible news. Like any professional musician on this planet today, they were not ready for this. That’s why the concept of carbonless music is for them a huge challenge, an extreme experiment with no certainty on the final result.

CURATORS

Sylvain Chauveau

Composer and performer of slow, minimal and quiet music. He has published 13 albums on labels

such as Sub Rosa or FatCat, and has played live in Europe, Asia and North America. Featured on the compilation XVI Reflections on Classical Music (Decca) alongside Philip Glass, Gavin Bryars and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Currently lives in Brussels.

His decarbonated music project involves composing new acoustic pieces to be worked on with 1 to 3 local musicians at each stage. He will also give lectures on his work and musical approach.

www.sylvainchauveau.com

Manu Louis

Belgian composer, musician and singer based in Berlin. Manu has performed in an electronic-pop-experimental solo over 500 times in Europe and Asia in the past years. He has also composed numerous chamber music pieces and collaborated with Escif, Systaime, Garrett List, Igloo records and Front de Cadeaux.

For this project he will compose an acoustic solo program as well as chamber and band music. He will give workshops on improvisation and collective composition.

www.louislouis.org

TOURS

The tours will alternate between residency locations where the artist will be invited to spend a week and stopover locations where he will give a single concert before hitting the road again.

The long stops in the main cities will last 5 to 7 days. This will be an opportunity for concrete

collaboration with local populations in three forms: workshops, public discussions/conferences,

concerts.

Decarbonized music workshops

The touring artists will be able to lead work sessions around their musical practice in a decarbonized context with groups of local people over several days or half-days, depending on their choice and the demand on site.

These workshops will target both adults and young people, musicians who have already practiced but also beginners, and with a minimum of female presence. They will take place in the respect of the concept of non (or little) polluting musical practice: without amplification or sound system, in daytime and without light, without electricity or fossil fuel - the participants will be encouraged to go there without motorized vehicle by privileging bicycle, walk or other sober mode of circulation (scooter...).

Meetings

These will take different forms: lectures by the musicians about their approach with questions from the audience, open dialogue on an artistic or ecological theme, debate on a chosen subject with possible interventions by local specialists on the issue.

Concerts

Some Zero Carbon Records artists will propose a concert involving local instrumentalists. The

repertoire will be designed beforehand for their different instruments. A time of meeting and collective rehearsal will be organized over several days up to the time of the concert, under the direction of the musician or the artist on tour.

WHAT WILL ZERO-CARBON MUSIC BE LIKE?

Historically, music has always been decarbonised and independent of the use of machines or

electricity - at least until the early 20th century. Maurice Ravel's melodies, gagaku (Japanese court

music), Indian repetitive music, Morton Feldman's atonal murmurs, Indonesian gamelans, Johannes Sebastian Bach's counterpoint, flamenco, Erik Satie's piano work, the music of the North African Gnawa, the vocal pieces of Gregorio Allegri, Sufi trance music, the operas of Richard Wagner, samba, or Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians did not need fossil fuels to exist.

A decarbonised practice of music in 2023 is therefore in no way a novelty: it has (almost) always

existed in human societies. However, Zero Carbon Records is not proposing a return to past styles or centuries-old traditions. We defend an aesthetic that is resolutely contemporary. This is to be

understood as taking into account the musical creation of previous centuries and its evolution, but

also as a practice impregnated and informed by several decades of electronic composition,

transformation and arrangement of sounds through the use of machines and recording studios over the last 80 years.

In other words, rather than a return to the days before electronics, we invite you to a musical creation of the post-machine era: music that is certainly acoustic, but enriched by a true culture of amplified music (rock, ambient, techno, hip-hop, dub, musique concrète, noise, glitch, granular synthesis, lowercase sound) that will allow, let's hope, for rare, if not unheard-of, mixes and sonic finds. Zero Carbon Records will be a catalogue of musicians who have had a link with pop (in the broadest sense) or club music and the avant-garde often explored by electronics.

In fact, we are not alone. Some of today's artists already propose innovative or singular acoustic

works that integrate the aesthetic achievements of electronics. To name a few, we could already cite the examples of Ryoji Ikeda (his recent pieces for percussion), Eliane Radigue (his compositions for instruments from the last 20 years), the drummer Julian Sartorius, Meredith Monk, Fredrik Rasten (Six Moving Guitars) or the Congolese group Fulu Miziki.

EVALUATION TOUR (28.05 - 15.06.2023)

To experiment the physical reality of the decarbonized tours, short tour by the two curators of Zero

Carbon Records as two solo musicians (Manu Louis, Sylvain Chauveau)

A tour in Belgium + France + Germany + Netherlands

Departure from Brussels (BE): 28.05 2023

Sunday 28.05 Alost (BE) (30 km)

Monday 29.05 Ghent (BE) (30 km)

Tuesday 30.05 Kortrijk (BE) (50 km)

Wednesday 31.05 Lille (FR) (32 km)

Thursday 01.06 Lille (FR) residency Avant Post

Friday 02.06 Lille (FR) residency Avant Post

Saturday 03.06 Lille (FR) concert with L’Aéronef + Avant Post

Sunday 04.06 Tournai (BE) (26 km)

Monday 05.06 Mons (BE) (54 km)

Tuesday 06.06 Charleroi (BE) (57 km)

Wednesday 07.06 Namur (BE) (43 km)

Thursday 08.06 Huy (BE) (33 km)

Friday 09.06 Liege (BE) (33 km) concerts + meeting “How far can we go with our contradictions?” with D’Une Certaine

Gaieté

Saturday 10.06 Aachen (DE) (53 km)

Sunday 11.06 Maastricht (NL) (34 km)

Monday 12.06 Hasselt (BE) (31 km)

Tuesday 13.06 Leuven (BE) (52 km)

Wednesday 14.06 Brussels (BE) (29 km) concerts + Artist talk (End of the tour) with Le Brass

Thursday 15.06 Brussels (BE) Public talk “What are artists willing to give up?” with Le Brass

TRANSPORTATIONS

No use of planes or cars. Although low-carbon, the train must also be abandoned because of its total dependence on electricity. The cargo bike, a kind of flatbed bike that can accommodate luggage, is proposed as the main mode of travel.

Any other decarbonated means of transport is also possible. But the slowness will force us to think of very short daily distances.

The cargo bike

The non-motorised vehicles for Zero Carbon Records tours will be cargo bikes (with a front tray for

luggage). They will either be custom made, with salvaged parts, in the city of departure of each artist, or rented or lent by local partner structures specialised in bicycle recycling.

The advantages :

Near-zero ecological impact during manufacture

Reduced manufacturing costs

Adaptation to the needs and size of each artist

The bike is available for other musicians who wish to tour in this way from the same city

The tours are designed to be physically feasible for non-athletic and untrained artists:

- Most of the territory crossed is flat

- The season for travelling between cities is between May and September (for the northern

hemisphere)

- Short distances for each stage: about 50 km maximum

- Stages lasting several days in towns with residences

BUDGET :

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1isbRvbRl7SjXWYS1GmQSWtNjl10cjSffx8h3mrm_BGA/edit

?usp=sharing

OUR CURRENT PARTNERS :

Le Brass (Brussels, BE)

Le Brass is the cultural center and house of cultures of Forest, in Brussels. They will host the final

show of the evaluation tour of Zero Carbon Records in June 2023, as well as a meeting between

artists, scientists and audience the day after the end of the tour.

D’une certaine gaieté (Liege, BE)

D’une certaine gaieté is a nomadic counter-culture platform based in Liege. They will host the Liege

concert of the evaluation tour.

Avant Post (Lille, FR)

Avant-Post was created in 2020 to support creation projects and artistic researches in the musical

field. They will co-organize the Lille show + residency.

L’Aéronef (Lille, FR)

L’Aéronef is an amplified music venue in the center of Lille. They co-organize the Lille concerts of the

evaluation tour.

Ratelier (Brussels, BE)

Ratelier is a space for DIY fixing of bicycles, with a big offer of recycled pieces. They provide the

construction and maintenance of bikes for Zero Carbon Records tours starting from Brussels.

The Green Room (Granville, FR)

Working with associated musicians and technicians, The Green Room sets up low carbon tours,

carries out evaluations, awareness raising actions, training and operational studies on artistic

practices and environmental issues.

TESTIMONIALS

Goodiepal, April 2021

Finnish electronic musician Goodiepal shared with us his experience of touring for several years

solely by velomobile (streamlined bicycle with aerodynamic bodywork), generating the electricity for his performances by pedalling himself.

Jesse Vernon (Fantasy Orchestra), April 2021

We asked Jesse about his annual UK and French bike tours with his big band the Fantasy Orchestra.

Adrien Louis, April 2021

Adrien regularly tours France by bike, he shared with us his experience of the roads and the journey.

The Green Room, November 2021

Gwenn Sharp specialises in decarbonising and reducing the ecological footprint of the music sector.

She advised us on how to tour and find partners.

La Cyclerie, March 2022

This Liege-based company repairs and manufactures bicycles from mostly recycled parts. Its director,

Yves, referred us to the cargo bikes for our tours and calculated the cost for us.

Antoine Davy, March 2022

Antoine is based in Brussels and his structure also repairs and manufactures bicycles by recycling the parts as much as possible, with a view to radical energy sobriety. He allowed us to try out a cargo bike of his own making and also gave us a quote for a bike made in Brussels.

Ludovic Bu, June 2022

Ludovic Bu is a lecturer, trainer and consultant on soft mobility for 25 years. He is currently an EELV

town councillor in Le Mans (France)s. He gave us his point of view on the Zero Carbon Records

project and pointed out examples of artistic projects that could go in a similar direction.

MORE INFORMATION - FAQ

Why avoid using electricity?

In 2019 fossil fuels provided 62.8% of the world's electricity. Coal alone provided 36.4% of this

production, nuclear power 10.35%, and only 10.39% for all new energies combined (solar, wind,

biomass and others, whose environmental impact must also be taken into account).

How will the music be composed?

In order to avoid additional CO2 emissions, the artists will not travel to the tour cities during the period

of preparation of the music to be played on the tour.

What are the limits to the dogma?

- Organization of tours by email and internet

- Use of smartphone/GPS possible (at the choice of the artists on the road) for orientation

during the tours

- Electricity accepted for meals and accommodation of artists during tours

- Use of current means of communication to promote the project

CONTACTS

Manu Louis : louis@louislouis.org

Sylvain Chauveau : sylvainchauveau@gmail.com