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Berangere Maximin was born in 1976 on the remote French colonial island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean and moved to France at the age of fifteen. Performing first as a singer, she later studied electroacoustic music with the composer Denis Dufour at the Perpignan Conservatoire. Her first professional experiences occurred in Paris, and in 2002 she moved there permanently. As a composer, she is most interested in preserving the spirit of live music in the studio, a passion passed on to her from her friends —guitarists and singers in rock and world music bands. Working out of her own Home Sweet Home Studio, she shoots sounds in a dark silent room, records soundscapes and acoustic sounds, plays with sampling, digital effects, performs on a variety of objects and sings. Her attraction to light and powerful sounds gives her work a very unique quality. After releasing the album "Tant Que Les heures Passent (As Long As The Hours Go By)" on the label of John Zorn, Tzadik Records, (August 2008), she created a live solo presented for the first time this fall, at the Stone (NYC), then at Mains d'Oeuvres (St-Ouen, Ile de France). This series of pieces for live voice and laptop called 'Stuck In A Nasty Little Film' continues to develop on the road.

'Working out of her own Home Sweet Home Studio in Paris, she creates landscapes that pull you in and hold your attention with a keen sense of detail and subtle sense of surprise. A seductive and beautiful debut CD from one of the most personal and passionate new voices in electroacoustic music.' J. Z.

'Maximin clearly has a knack for making the most of her tools. Using only tape and voice, she displays a highly mature sense of patience in her composition, allowing each piece to unfold into its own entity that is ripe with morsels of surprising humor and effect. The amount of sound at any given moment is impressive, but more impressive is the fine management of those sounds as Maximin never lets the work become claustrophobic, allowing each individual noise its own space in the mix. (...) Despite the vast accomplishments of previous electroacousticians, Maximin manages to carve out her own corner of the sound. (...) The composer can utilize these sounds to create works of strong individual character and impressive emotive depth is a testament to her achievements and further potential as a sonic collagist'. Henry Smith, Brainwashed.

(...) 'Certainly her music is vividly direct. On the title piece, warbling birdsong and the twanging of a metal ruler are interleaved over a rhythmically responsive percussive shuffle. The next track, Boudmo (Cheers) – inspired by Ukrainian drinking songs, combines the drip and glug of water with flourishes from zither-like strings over another rhythmic shuffle. This music enacts the coming together of sounds found and contrived. Maximin’s light touch and discreet dramatic effectiveness bear comparison with Luc Ferrari’s deft musical essays on relationships between incident and intention. Tant Que Les Heures Passent also offers a lively jingle made for some global music radio show ; a patchwork of texts read in French against low-key electroacoustic backdrop ; syncopated minimalism reminiscent of trumpeter John Hassell’s take on Aka Pygmy chants ; and an ominous soundscape packed with nautical creaks, tolling bells, heavy footfalls, bursts of orchestral melodrama and drums. Altogether a nourishing selection'. Julian Cowley. The Wire.