02.02.2022 Views

Volume 27 Issue 4 - February 2022

Gould's Wall -- Philip Akin's "breadcrumb trail; orchestras buying into hope; silver linings to the music theatre lockdown blues; Charlotte Siegel's watershed moments; Deep Wireless at 20; and guess who is Back in Focus. All this and more, now online for your reading pleasure.

Gould's Wall -- Philip Akin's "breadcrumb trail; orchestras buying into hope; silver linings to the music theatre lockdown blues; Charlotte Siegel's watershed moments; Deep Wireless at 20; and guess who is Back in Focus. All this and more, now online for your reading pleasure.

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS
  • No tags were found...

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

ecorded in one take, moments after the<br />

words had been written, is another testament<br />

to the creative ability of these players.<br />

While far from being “straight ahead,” Genius<br />

Loci North offers something interesting for all<br />

listeners.<br />

Sam Dickinson<br />

Glow<br />

François Carrier; Diego Caicedo; Pablo<br />

Schvarzman; Michel Lambert<br />

Colya Koo Music<br />

(francoiscarrier.bandcamp.com)<br />

! While two<br />

Canadians and two<br />

South Americans<br />

meeting in a<br />

Barcelona bar has<br />

all the elements<br />

of a shaggy dog<br />

story, that’s what<br />

happened with<br />

Glow; although instead of a punchline what<br />

we get here is a session of superior improvised<br />

music. Canadians, alto saxophonist<br />

François Carrier and drummer Michel<br />

Lambert, along with Colombian guitarist<br />

Diego Caicedo and Argentinean Pablo<br />

Schvarzman, who employs guitar and electronics,<br />

both now Spanish residents, operate<br />

as one unit during the CD’s five tracks.<br />

Emphasizing voltage extensions<br />

throughout, not only do the guitarists project<br />

expected twangs, frails and strums, but<br />

Schvarzman’s electronics also produce an<br />

undulating drone as well as throbbing vibrations<br />

which frequently mirror double bass<br />

sluices. Lambert’s irregular drum patterning<br />

is used for coloration not rhythmic pulse,<br />

which leaves performances twisted every<br />

which way by Carrier and Caicedo.<br />

Hammering or picking his strings, the<br />

guitarist moves from reflective accompaniment<br />

to brittle adagio shakes. The saxophonist<br />

doesn’t play standard licks but overlays each<br />

track with a variety of effects from screaming<br />

fragmented bites to harsh breathy honks<br />

and slurs. Unique tropes evolve throughout<br />

to establish collective equilibrium. This is<br />

aptly demonstrated when the set climaxes<br />

with Heart Core, the penultimate track.<br />

Repeated string ratcheting strokes coupled<br />

with reed motifs soaring from dyspeptic<br />

scoops to bagpipe-like drones to staccato<br />

tongue flutters, reach such a point of pressurized<br />

intensity that they seem unstoppable,<br />

but quickly and easily downturn to relaxed<br />

timbres later on.<br />

Glow is no joke just fine exploratory music.<br />

Ken Waxman<br />

Spring 2021<br />

René Lussier; Erick d’Orion; Robbie Kuster;<br />

Martin Tétreault<br />

Victo CD 134 (victo.qc.ca)<br />

! The Victo record<br />

label is almost<br />

as venerable as<br />

the Victoriaville,<br />

Quebec FIMAV<br />

festival that gave it<br />

birth, and this disc<br />

is a signal moment<br />

in the history<br />

of both. The performance comes from the<br />

May 2021 festival, a hardy, insistent edition<br />

with a Quebec focus following the pandemiccancelled<br />

2020 festival. The recording marks<br />

the label’s 35th anniversary with special<br />

significance: the first recording issued was a<br />

guitar duet that also featured René Lussier,<br />

then in the company of Fred Frith.<br />

In keeping with the festival’s ideal of<br />

musique actuel, current music, this resists<br />

classification, a collective improvisational,<br />

combining Lussier’s electric guitar and daxophone<br />

(a bowed, fretted instrument), Robbie<br />

Kuster’s drums, Érick d’Orion’s computer and<br />

electronics and Martin Tétreault’s turntables.<br />

It blurs categories of electronic music, free<br />

jazz and anarcho-rock, the latter sometimes<br />

suggested by Kuster’s steady beat anchoring<br />

disparate elements.<br />

The music’s aim is neither clarity nor easy<br />

consumption; its strengths are in its vision,<br />

energy and a palpable sense of resistance.<br />

Lussier’s guitar is often the central voice,<br />

hard-edged, icy, sometimes distorted, at times<br />

limpidly lyrical. He can supply a focal element<br />

whether creating a keening, electric wail or<br />

shifting to the barely amplified wandering<br />

of L’avant dernière. L’autre, a nine-minute<br />

segment near the temporal centre of the<br />

work, develops mysterious and distinct<br />

layers and events that are almost sculpturally<br />

arrayed in the sound field, the seemingly<br />

independent parts ultimately evolving into<br />

part of a collective vision.<br />

Stuart Broomer<br />

Knotted Threads<br />

Yves Charuest; Benedict Taylor<br />

Tour de Bras tdb 90048/Inexhaustible<br />

Editions ie040<br />

(tourdebras.bandcamp.com)<br />

! Montreal-based<br />

alto saxophonist<br />

Yves Charuest is a<br />

free improviser of<br />

the highest order,<br />

a musician of rare<br />

depth and originality.<br />

During a sixmonth<br />

residency<br />

in London in 2017, he heard English violist<br />

Benedict Taylor, felt an immediate affinity<br />

and soon began a collaboration that joins two<br />

of the closest listeners in improvised music.<br />

In 2019, Charuest arranged some Montreal<br />

performances for the duo and dancer Alanna<br />

Kraaijiveld, during which time he and Taylor<br />

recorded Knotted Threads.<br />

There are innate difficulties in describing<br />

any music, but the problems compound<br />

with free improvisation. While one is free<br />

to say almost anything, finding something<br />

relevant is a challenge. Charuest and<br />

Taylor, generously, provide an ideal metaphor<br />

for their work: a series of titles taken<br />

from arcane knots used by fishermen, sailors<br />

and craftsmen for centuries, thereby highlighting<br />

both the practice and goal of their<br />

special idiom. Each is a virtuoso of extended<br />

as well as conventional techniques, each an<br />

explorer of sonority, attacks and decays – to<br />

the extent that their sounds, like their pitch<br />

ranges, intersect. Gauzy and gritty harmonics,<br />

whether bowed or blown; percussive knocks,<br />

whether plucked string or struck keypad;<br />

subtle shifts in dynamics or sudden glissandi:<br />

they all intertwine in myriad ways, whether<br />

designated as Ossel Hitch, Round Lashing,<br />

Poldo Tackle or Bimini Twist.<br />

There are moments when the whole voyage<br />

is revealed. On Chain Sinnet, the viola sounds<br />

like a rope stretching against a gunwale, the<br />

saxophone like gulls, landed in the bow –<br />

yet all of it human, rope and gull crying as<br />

one. It’s an hour of music with the precision<br />

and gravitas of several chapters of Homer’s<br />

Odyssey or Moby Dick.<br />

Stuart Broomer<br />

You Can’t Take It With You<br />

Chet Doxas<br />

Whirlwind Recordings WW4778<br />

(chetdoxas.com)<br />

! You Can’t<br />

Take It with You<br />

is a creative and<br />

swinging drummerless<br />

offering from<br />

Montreal-born<br />

New York-based<br />

saxophonist, Chet<br />

Doxas. Doxas’<br />

tenure in NYC has led him to play with the<br />

who’s who of American musicians, including<br />

a long-term collaboration with Steve Swallow<br />

and Carla Bley, who encouraged Doxas to put<br />

together this trio project over conversations<br />

during a European tour. Pianist Ethan Iverson<br />

and bassist Thomas Morgan are perfectly<br />

suited for the ten original pieces Doxas<br />

penned for the recording, which comes as no<br />

surprise given their individual reputations for<br />

making creative yet grounded music.<br />

The album’s title track is almost bluesy<br />

in nature, making it a perfect introduction<br />

to this often abstract but always grooving<br />

recording. I was surprised to read that its<br />

inspiration comes from compositions by<br />

Count Basie, but this makes sense after a<br />

second listen. The following track Lodestar<br />

also takes its inspiration from a source I didn’t<br />

immediately recognize; saxophone legend<br />

thewholenote.com <strong>February</strong> <strong>2022</strong> | 51

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!