The work of Ōtone (Pablo Diserens’ solo project) is characterised by an ongoing investigation of abstract industrial soundscapes. In 2017, they started a collection/series of self-made metallic objects called Tetsu that they use as compositional tools and performative instruments. On stage, Ōtone manipulates these instruments and blends them with material from their field recordings archive. Their timbers exploration plays with the listeners’ acoustic memory to create new sonic combinations and associations until another landscape emerges. In this recorded performance, Ōtone improvises on Tetsu I and Tetsu III, elaborating slowly evolving percussive accumulations and wind-instrument-like frictions, while a drone made out of recordings of resonating metal bars gradually ascends. Subtle recordings of birds, water and sea urchins also appear throughout the performance giving an organic touch to the metallic soundscape at play.

Since 2015 Ōtone is the founder and curator of ygam, a space for industrial tapestries and peculiar studies of noise to unfold, where artists are invited to create subjective sonic representations around spatial, architectural and abstract notions.