Encore peu connu de l’amateur de disques, Pierre Labbé (saxophone) présente ici un premier opus surprenant en tant que «leader». Membre du groupe (prog-rock-fanfare) de Claude St-Jean Les Projectionnistes et collaborateur du sculpteur sonore Jean-Pierre Gauthier, Labbé nous présente maintenant son propre ensemble: Bernard Falaise (guitare électrique), Frédéric Alarie (contrebasse), Claude Lavergne (batterie) ainsi que Nathalie Bonin (violon) et Julie Trudeau (violoncelle). Le saxophoniste signe ici une musique hybride où rock, jazz (clin d’œil à Ornette Coleman), musique contemporaine alternent et se mélangent dans un dialogue soutenu entre composition et improvisation. De beaux thèmes — tantôt vaguement, mélos (Le blanc des yeux), tantôt franchement ludiques (Bloops) — servent de point de départ à ces agiles constructions: véritables jeux de blocs qui font s’emboîter agilement les styles autant que la variété de l’instrumentation. Étonnamment inventive et accessible, la musique de Pierre Labbé saura plaire aux amateurs de musiques rock et jazz éclatées. À ceux qui sont tombés sous le charme des musiques de chambre de John Zorn (Masada, etc.), je recommande fortement ce disque qui vous entraînera plus avant dans l’éclectisme tout en vous faisant découvrir un créateur original de chez nous qui se fait définitivement une place unique dans le monde des musiques actuelles.

For Twenty Quarter lnch Jacks, Brady reclaims his guitarist hat with a joyful vengeance. (The composer cap is still on his head, but noticeably askew.) The title selection is an eight-movement homage to the six-stringed beast, or rather, twenty of the things (see article Twenty Quarter Inch Jacks in Musicworks 85). Originally composed for and performed by a group of student guitarists, this version has Brady supplying all of the voices himself through the wonders of multi-track recording. His own physical voice provides occasional commentary and intones an alphabetical honour roll of guitar greats. The music pays homage to Steve Reich’s seminal 1987 work, Electric Counterpoint, yet is uniquely and compellingly Brady. Musk Box Bell Curves, (Hello Paris…), and Sauchiehall Street are scored for guitar and tape, and Brady manipulates the elements of each piece into a seamless whole. The former offers moments of transcendental beauty amid studied washes of sonic colour, although I find occasional vocal injections (Hello Paris…) to be intrusive at best. More eloquent is Sauchiehall Street, which captures Brady doing what he does best: creating vivid, imaginative soundscapes into which his own fluent guitarisms blend effortlessly.

Fans of Tim Brady’s guitar work may enjoy Twenty Quarter Inch Jacks, but others might be wise to start with his earlier Justin Time releases Scenarios, Imaginary Guitars, and Strange Attractors.

Tim Brady is very comfortable in his two hats. On one side of his head sits his electric guitarist fez, emblazoned with colourful emblems showing his affiliation with various rock and jazz schools, and manufacturers of electronica. On the other side perches his composer cap, of a trifle more scholarly cut, you will notice, but worn nonetheless at a rakish angle. The brain inside the head that these hats adorn has been responsible for a sizable number of recordings over the past few years, more or less equally divided between the “composer” and “guitarist” hemispheres. Two recent releases on Ambiances Magnétiques continue this trend.

Unison Rituals brings together five Brady compositions spanning fifteen years. Each work carries Brady’s compositional trademark: sinuous, rapid-flowing melodic lines, syncopated yet utterly fluid, given precise unison voice by the participating musicians in what can only be described as a form of ritual — virtuosic, technically dazzling, and demanding a Zen-like detachment. All but one of these performances are guitar-free.

At the core of the album are the three most recent pieces, all dating from the mid-1990s and all performed by permutations of the Bradyworks ensemble. Double Helix initially bears more than a passing resemblance to Doubling from Brady’s album 10 Collaborations. But where the latter maintained a single and single-minded melodic thread throughout, Double Helix grows a second strand and then lets the two curl sensuously and organically around each other. In Two Chords Less Than a Blues, three musicians -— pianist, percussionist, saxophonist —- circle each other warily like competing wolves, mingling menacing growls with bravura displays of aggression as they stake out their individual sonic turf. Gradually, they learn to co-exist and the tension and energy drain perceptibly away. But before long their insipid alliance crumbles and frenzied animalism returns. Escapement, by way of contrast, is a work on an entirely human scale, where Brady’s own retuned guitar —- in its sole appearance on the album—provides a backbone upon which the other instruments (percussion, cello, soprano saxophone) drape muscles, tendons, thoughts, dreams, emotions. Here, unison is achieved in commonality of spirit and the results are literally ecstatic.

Bracketing this trio of Brady works performances are two older works. Unison Rituals (1991) as rendered by the saxophone quartet, Quasar, is by turns stridently frenzied and delicately reflective. Quasar handles the difficult extremes with aplomb. Less affecting is the concluding Sound Off, a 1983 composition designed, according to the notes, “to be played in an outdoor, urban environment.” The drastically scaled-down version here (thirteen minutes rather than forty-five; forty two musicians rather than 108) is nevertheless hopelessly out-of-scale to the rest of the finely turned album, although the performance, by brass and percussion ensemble Kappa, is committed.

For Twenty Quarter lnch Jacks, Brady reclaims his guitarist hat with a joyful vengeance. (The composer cap is still on his head, but noticeably askew.) The title selection is an eight-movement homage to the six-stringed beast, or rather, twenty of the things (see article Twenty Quarter Inch Jacks in Musicworks 85). Originally composed for and performed by a group of student guitarists, this version has Brady supplying all of the voices himself through the wonders of multi-track recording. His own physical voice provides occasional commentary and intones an alphabetical honour roll of guitar greats. The music pays homage to Steve Reich’s seminal 1987 work, Electric Counterpoint, yet is uniquely and compellingly Brady. Musk Box Bell Curves, (Hello Paris…), and Sauchiehall Street are scored for guitar and tape, and Brady manipulates the elements of each piece into a seamless whole. The former offers moments of transcendental beauty amid studied washes of sonic colour, although I find occasional vocal injections (Hello Paris…) to be intrusive at best. More eloquent is Sauchiehall Street, which captures Brady doing what he does best: creating vivid, imaginative soundscapes into which his own fluent guitarisms blend effortlessly.

Fans of Tim Brady’s guitar work may enjoy Twenty Quarter Inch Jacks, but others might be wise to start with his earlier Justin Time releases Scenarios, Imaginary Guitars, and Strange Attractors.

The highly empathetic duo performance of Joane Hétu and Jean Derome focused instead on the word-sound and the instrument noisemaker continuum. Jean Derome, equipped with a small table full of noisemakers—from children’s toys through to small bells and whistles—blurred the distinction between a toy and an instrument. In a silent concert hall, is a Japanese fan rubbed against a microphone now a proper instrument? Indeed,these smail instruments were integrated into an overall sonic structune with all the hallmarks of a high-art musical work, complete with unison melody playing and clear beginnings, middles and ends. Jean’s flute and sax playing was rich and lyrical, with no hint that we were expected to take his sound creations in toto as toy-like, as incidental or children’s music Joane’s high overtones on the sax melded into her vocalizations, which themselves mouved between preconceived text and pure vocal improvisation, often bereft of even phonetic reference. Do these sounds take on meaning, Iike words, when found both alongside words and as parts of a structural whole redolent with meaning? Would one consider many of these sounds to be inviting of aesthetic evaluation if heard in a different context?

Premier intérêt de ce disque: le vaste panorama des voies que Tim Brady aime s’approprier. On peut contester certaines avenues, on ne reste que pantois devant la conviction que ce compositeur déploie discrètement à dire ce qui lui est important. Unison Ritual avait séduit en concert; retrouver cette pièce au disque est encore mieux tant la technique d’enregistrement est magnifique. Cette première plage s’avère le temps fort du disque. Il y a là tout ce qu’il faut pour que même ceux qui trouvent la musique contemporaine absconse se dédisent: énergie, mélodie, effets intrigants, tout fait qu’on accroche à la vision de Brady. Dans le reste du programme, on navigue selon ses propres goûts. Il s’y trouve des moments de complaisance désolants comme des éclairs insoupçonnés qui forcent une réflexion sur l’hybridation entre musique populaire et savante, européenne et américaine, québécoise francophone et anglophone. Bref, on tient ici un beau sismographe des tendances qui font telluriquement bouger les créateurs d’ici.

Compositeur et guitariste montréalais croisant les influences américaines et européennes, Tim Brady a déjà enregistré plus d’une dizaine d’albums sur Justin Time et Ambiances Magnétiques. Sur ce nouvel album, il rassemble cinq pièces pour saxophone(s) et ensemble(s) enregistrées entre 1998 et 2001 par Quasar, les Bradyworks et kappa. Loin de l’improvisation, ces pièces offrent un singulier alliage de minimalisme et de virtuosité, nous faisant passer de la musique de chambre au big band à travers une séquence qui introduit parfaitement à l’univers de Brady. Outre d’intéressants dialogues entre le sax et la guitare (Escapement), on peut difficilement interrompre la finale Sound Off, qui, au long de ses 12 courtes minutes, nous plonge dans un magma insolite tenant de la science-fiction et du film noir.