Dictée Magique

"Dictée Magique" by DJ **** and Sainte Rita is a four-turntable mix built from talking records.

The voices from their vinyls overlap, interrupt, and answer one another — babble, speeches, archives, reports, Dada poetry — everything becomes a poem in this sonic collage whose primary material is the voice, phonation itself.
The result is a polyphony where Coco the parrot disrupts a hypnosis session, where Colette Magny converses with Antonin Artaud and a cappella dance tracks. During the Dictée Magique, bodies also speak: this collage is as much a performance as a mix, where the improvisation of the two turntablists unfolds live and visually — the recordings presented here preserve none of their gestures.

DJ **** (also known as Lolo Tuerie, David Guettari, and Fanny Quément) has been collecting this kind of record for years. Also a writer and translator, she has integrated her interest in prosody into her translation methods and developed a practice of reading aloud. She theorized her relationship to the listening of these records in the article “Poèmes arrangés”, published in issue no. 9 of Audimat magazine.

Sainte Rita is an all-terrain DJ who enjoys subverting the rules of mixing — whether in a club or in less festive settings. He’s interested in palindromic DJ sets, thematic mixes, the archiving of overlooked French dance music, and poetry. He writes it too. He also makes music with Helio Volana in the duo.