Manouche, klezmer, jazz… dans les règles de l’art!

Dans la foulée des expériences néo-manouches, néo-gitanes, néo-klezmer et autres amalgames croisant entre jazz et folklores européens marqués par l’Orient (et qui séduisent nombre de mélomanes québécois depuis quelques années), Ipso Facto révèle un noyau intéressant de musiciens qui lorgnent aussi le bluegrass intello. Sous la gouverne du guitariste et compositeur David Bussières (frérot de la célébrissime Pascale) qui travaille avec la violoniste Chantal Bergeron depuis l’époque où ils étudiaient ensemble à Vincent d’Indy, ce quatuor comprend aussi le contrebassiste Simon Dolan et le percussionniste Francis Roberge. Du bon travail, un coefficient de difficulté plutôt élevé, mais des compositions qui ont tout de l’exercice de style vu la mi-vingtaine de celui qui les signe. Dans les règles de l’art, en somme.

Hot damn! After digging through what seems like a thousand discs of half-hearted indie-rock blandness, I’ve found some gypsy improv jazz.

Ipso Facto, part of the fledgling (I believe) Monsieur Fauteux, m’entendez-vous? street musician collective, are apparently authentic Quebec gypsies. I can’t honestly claim to know what this signifies; for all I know, they live in wooden caravans parked on the darkened backstreets of Montréal as opposed to, say, shacking up in a big old polluted loft space with eight of their closest friends. It doesn’t matter. The quartet’s music — a jaunty, sometimes ribald mix of violin, acoustic guitar, contrabass and percussion — sounds like classic gypsy tunes, rooted in the rich mystery and wanderlust of Eastern European musical tradition, but also channels the passion and uncertainty of modern exploratory jazz.

Prohibition-era hot jazz borrowed liberally from gypsy and Jewish music, particularly its use of violin as primary “voice”. Ipso Facto compresses all of those approaches into a single aesthetic. Violinist Chantal Bergeron is the group’s driving force, and her instrument defines each song’s emotional standpoint: she pushes Attention Zingaro in a rollicking and dangerous direction, fills Yiddish Meshugass with a dark and mildly mocking air of mystery, empowers Soleil Rouge’s mournful tango, helps to bring Voltapük to a jazzy boil and heads down south for the country swing of Crazy Cowboys. And let’s not forget Kosmos Klezmer, in which Bergeron’s violin functions as a time-honored stand-in for the traditional clarinet.

Guitarist David Bussières connects Bergeron’s dots — which, on album, relegates him to something of a secondary role. That’s ironic, given that he wrote all but one of these pieces (Y fait frette à Madrid, for which Bergeron shares credit). Bussières picks and plucks his way around the fretboard rather than sloshing through endless barre chords, but his nimbled-fingered performance, which owes more to classical guitar compositions and certain noodly-guitar-intensive strains of jazz than rock ’n roll, is initially overshadowed by the violin. On a few tracks, his work stands out immediately — see the mournful Alchimie and the gloriously twisting Kosmos Klezmer; elsewhere, his details will only be revealed over the course of repeat listens.

Simon Dolan (bass) and Francis Roberge (percussion), as the rhythm section, have significant control over the group’s direction. Dolan’s steadfast, thrumming rhythms ride herd on every tempo; hear him hold Yiddish Meshugass in syncopated check, slow L’Affaire Mendoza to a distraught crawl, and spur Crazy Cowboys onward in a jazzy two-step. Roberge, meanwhile, is the group’s stylistic anchor, pinning each tune to a specific mood. Through Roberge, Yiddish Meshugass acquires its endearing woodblock rhythm, Kosmos Klezmer gains the brush-, shaker-, bongo- and tambourine-driven electricity of a free jazz workout, and Voltapük careens jazzily (and a bit disjointedly) through a grab-bag of percussion concepts.

There’s a flaw here, but it’s unavoidable. Simply by committing their music to tape, Ipso Facto rob themselves of much of the unpredictability that must be unleashed, full force, during their live performances. That also means that La spirale de l’escargot isn’t as “improvisational” as it could be; each of the disc’s twelve pieces allows room for the quartet to stretch, but their explorations seem fairly structured as a matter of necessity. We’re therefore spared the sometimes painful moments, amply documented on a few of parent label DAME’s more envelope-pushing releases, in which group members stretch for a sonic convergence that’s clearly beyond their reach — but we’re also denied the truly transcendent serendipity of an eight-minute jam session in which everything clicks. Fair enough; this is Ipso Facto’s first album, and they’ve done a laudable job of capturing the spirit of their hybridized gypsy jazz. Don’t be surprised, however, if after a few listens, you’re dying to see the group play around a forest campfire — as free from rules, obligations and limitations as they gypsies whose blood they claim to share.

Les Poules began as a side project for Joane Hétu (vocals, sax), Diane Labrosse (keyboards) and Danielle Palardy Roger (drums), three members of the feminist collective Wondeur Brass. The release of their first LP in 1986 cemented the relationships and the musical approach of this trio: a partly improvised form of synthetic avant-pop. The members went on to participate in many other projects. In 2000 the trio itself was resurrected as a free improv unit and a new CD came out in 2002.

The year is 1986, the location Montréal. A group of avant-rock feminists has been active for a few years under the name Wondeur Brass. Started as a political music theatre, it has evolved into a provoking experimental pop group. At that point Hétu, Labrosse and Roger, the three most avant-gardist elements of the collective, felt the need to retract from the large ensemble (which has counted as many as nine members at one point) to work on their own small-scale project, christened Les Poules — “the chicks,” a bitter name for feminists. The music on Les contes de l’amère loi, released in 1986, shows a sharper focus than Wondeur Brass’ Ravir (1985): post-new-wave in spirit, cold and chaotic, the songs left more room to improvisation and yet packed more punch. Instead of bringing back the other members of WB, on hiatus, the trio decided to sack them and hire bassist Marie Trudeau. This quartet recorded Simoneda, Reine des esclaves under the moniker Wondeur Brass before switching to Justine and releasing two more albums in the 1990s. Hétu, Labrosse and Roger continued to work on each other’s solo projects and co-run the production company SuperMusique, but everyone believed Les Poules was a project of the past.

In 2000, Hétu, Labrosse and Roger performed in Victoria and Vancouver (Canada) as a trio again and the use of their old group name came naturally. A year later, Ambiances Magnétiques reissued Les contes de l’amère loi on CD and the trio presented a concert in Montréal. No nostalgia is involved, the old repertoire has been buried. The new Poules play quiet free improvisation. Lyrics have devolved into abstract vocalizations, the keyboard licks have become treated samples, the beats have turned into textural percussion work. Prairie Orange came out in 2002.

La pièce-titre est une composition pour un chœur de 20 guitares électriques (toutes jouées par Brady ici) et passe en revue les possibilités de l’instrument, du son le plus propre au plus fuzzé et de la mélodie la plus douce au heavy métal. Commandée par le festival Les Coups de Théâtre pour être interprétée par 20 élèves d’écoles secondaires, on pourrait s’attendre à ce que cette musique soit simpliste: or, il n’en est rien et il faudra entendre ça en concert (création le 20 novembre à 21 h à l’espace chorégraphique Jean-Pienre Perreault pour voir si le compositeur n’a pas surestimé ses musiciens! Aussi sur ce disque, une commande de l’Ina-GRM et une autre du Centre for Contemporary Arts de Glasgow, toutes deux pour guitare et bande, où Brady explore avec bonheur l’espace sonore électroacoustique.

After releasing a pile of albums on the Montréal jazz label Justin Time, which despite its progressive outlook on the genre was always a little overwhelmed by the experimental nature of his productions, Tim Brady delivered in 20 Quarter Inch Jacks his first CD for Ambiances Magnétiques. And a good one it is, ironically lighter than some of his previous recordings yet still challenging and charged with that special Brady-esque guitar humor. The disc contains three new works. First up is the thundering title track, a suite in eight parts running for a total of 30 minutes. Written for 20 electric guitar players (all parts performed by Brady on this recording, but it has been played live with an ensemble), the piece attempts to run through the history of the instrument in a whimsical setting of narrator-and-examples. Movement titles like Metal, Waves, Harmonic Fields or Big Chords are as programmatic as can be. In the Opening, a multi-tracked Brady introduces the notes strummed one by one, à la Viv Stanshall in Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. Taken as a whole the piece presents intricate arrangements, some crunchy playing and good-hearted fun. It could be reasonably deemed too light by some detractors. The sixth part, An Alphabet of Guitarists, is exactly that: Brady calls the name of one guitarist per letter of the alphabet over a group riff left unchanged by these invocations. Its purpose remains uncertain and its presence questionable (guitar fans may also want to debate the composer’s choices). This long piece should not overshadow the presence of Music Box Bell Curves (Hello Paris!), a stunning 14 minutes of electroacoustic music combining wailing guitars, powerful sample treatments and martial rhythms reminiscent of Art Zoyd. The closing Sauchiehall Street is a piece for guitar and tape moving from atmospheric playing to frenzied soloing and back.