Throughout the 1980s and most of the ’90s, René Lussier was the prime mover on Montréal’s new music scene. His guitar work has been compared to Fred Frith, with whom he has often toured and recorded. Spread between solo work, duos and large ensemble pieces, between studio compositions, structured improvisation, free improv and film music, his impressive body of work represents a full course in “musique actuelle,” a term he helped to peg down. His masterpiece remains the speech-music collage Le trésor de la langue which earned him the Paul Gilson Award in 1989. He also received the Freddy Stone Award in 1996 for his contribution to Canadian new music.

Lussier began to play guitar in high school bands. He started to develop his own brand of jazz-meets-folk-meets-freak in the collective Conventum. This group included guitarist André Duchesne with whom he stroke a lasting friendship. He recorded two albums with Conventum and a handful of film scores, the first of what would become an endless list (over 50 by 2001). After the group’s disbanding, Lussier enrolled in the Grand Orchestre de Montréal, an experimental fanfare of sorts where he met Nébu saxophonist Jean Derome. Together they recorded music for the National Film Board of Canada and got involved in many projects, some of which included Duchesne and clarinetist Robert Marcel Lepage.

The four of them founded the collective and record label Ambiances Magnétiques in 1983. That year Lussier released his first solo album, Fin du travail (Version 1), the title of which (“Finished work [1st version]”) already displayed his uncanny sense of humor. His big break came in 1986 when Michel Levasseur, artistic director of the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville (FIMAV), proposed a duo concert with Fred Frith. Henry Cow and the whole Rock-in-Opposition movement had been a big influence on Lussier — this was his chance. The resulting album Nous Autres introduced him to an international audience. In 1988 Frith invited him and Derome to join Keep the Dog.

In 1989, with the help of Frith and a cast of Ambiances Magnétiques players, Lussier recorded Le trésor de la langue. Pushed by its political resonances, the album became the label’s biggest seller and the first classic item in the history of musique actuelle. Further albums, solo and with Les Granules, established him as a highly creative and witty composer and improviser. But as years passed Lussier felt the collective weight more and more on his shoulders. The mid-to-late ’90s saw him experimenting with more abstract forms of improvisation with mixed results and severing links with old friends, including Derome when he left his band Les Dangereux Zhoms. In 2001 he resolutely stepped away from the collective and released CDs on Ohm Editions and La Tribu. The album Tombola Rasa and a country-folk project with American maverick Eugene Chadbourne indicated a return to earlier pleasures at the start of the new decade.

A Montréal native, where he is still based, guitarist Bernard Falaise exploded on the new music scene in the late ’90s, appearing in many Ambiances Magnétiques-related outfits, especially in avant-rock oriented groups that included drummer Rémi Leclerc (Miriodor, Les Projectionnistes, Papa Boa). He is also active on the free improv scene, playing with Klaxon Gueule and Robert Marcel Lepage among others. His distinctive guitar style, at times raw and twangy, at others highly atmospheric, set him apart in the same class of originals as René Lussier. He is also a much in-demand record producer and has composed contemporary classical music in his spare time for the tango ensemble Quartango and the saxophone quartet Quasar.

Falaise was born in 1965. Little is known from his formative years. He picked up the guitar in his teens and came to music from the progressive side of rock — King Crimson’s Robert Fripp is an obvious influence. He studied music and started to work professionally in the early 1990s, joining the avant-prog group Miriodor. The group’s fourth album, Jongleries Élastiques, came out in 1995 and introduced his playing to fans of the genre. The enthusiastic response to the album ensured he was dutifully acknowledged for his important contribution to the group’s refreshed sound.

Miriodor drummer Rémi Leclerc was already well acquainted with the avant-garde music collective Ambiances Magnétiques and he introduced his friend. Falaise quickly became a favorite sideman and enrolled in Claude St-Jean’s Les Projectionnistes, Michel F Côté’s Klaxon Gueule, Duchesne’s Diesel (sadly undocumented), and started the group Papa Boa with Leclerc, saxophonist Pierre Labbé and bassist Frédéric Roverselli.

In 1999-2000 Falaise diversified his activities, reaching a wider audience. He co-wrote with Côté the music for Robert Lepage’s film “Nô” and began to work with alternative pop artists. He co-produced the first album by Jorane in 1999 and the next year produced and played on Marie-Jo Thério’s acclaimed CD “La Maline.” The number of awards and praise this album gathered assured him a first-class status as cutting-edge producer. In the meantime he released his first solo CD, Do, a collection of multi-tracked guitar pieces.

Alexandre St-Onge is an ambiguous artist from Montréal. He started playing free jazz on double bass and quickly developed into a sound/performance artist. He belongs to the generation of experimentalists and improvisors that came after the Ambiances Magnétiques collective and was actually instrumental in establishing some contacts between that group of artists and the younger ones revolving around Godspeed You Black Emperor! He has released a few solo albums and recorded and performed with Klaxon Gueule, Undo, Et Sans and Shalabi Effect.

St-Onge studied double bass. Little is known of his formative years, but his first major musical activity was being recruited by Ambiances Magnétiques drummer Michel F Côté to form the free improv trio Klaxon Gueule (also with Bernard Falaise). A first album, Bavards, came out in 1997 on which St-Onge performs in a classic American free jazz style. By the time the group’s second CD Muets was released two years later he had abandoned conventional playing, focusing on effects, electronics and textures, dragging the formation into European-style electro-acoustic improv.

In the meantime the bassist had met the other, mostly anglophone Montréal avant-garde scene, collaborating with the likes of Sam Shalabi (in his Shalabi Effect with albums out on Alien8 Recordings), David Kristian (the trio Kristian Shalabi St-Onge, also on Alien8), and conceptual artist Christof Migone, once of the Quebec sound art collective Avatar. St-Onge released a first solo album, Image/Négation in early 1999. It established his fondness for the exploration of silence and noise, relating his work to artists like Francisco López, John Duncan, Bernhard Günter and John Hudak.

On his second solo effort, Une mâchoire et deux trous (1999, Namskeio) he built eery textures by putting contact microphones in his mouth. This idea was developed into a performance art concept with Migone in the duo Undo. The pair also founded the record label Squint Fucker Press in 2001. Meanwhile St-Onge reached a certain level of success with the avant-psychedelic outfit Shalabi Effect. He also recorded an album with Godspeed You Black Emperor!’s Roger Tellier-Craig as Et Sans.

Saxophonist, singer, improviser, composer, and record label manager Joane Hétu ranks among the pillars of the Montréal avant-garde music scene revolving around the collective Ambiances Magnétiques. A small but very stubborn woman, she made a career for herself starting out of nowhere at age 19, to become a successful businesswoman and a vocalist with a very distinctive style. She has recorded many albums with the groups Wondeur Brass, Justine, Les Poules, Castor et Compagnie, with her husband Jean Derome and solo.

A Montréaler born and raised, Hétu turned to music in 1977, at age 19 when she started to learn the alto saxophone by herself, with no notions of music theory. Two years later she briefly fell in love with pianist Pierre St-Jak who introduced her to an eccentric bunch of artists tied to the Pouet Pouet Band and L’Enfant Fort (which years later would evolve into the Fanfare Pourpour). These experimentalists confirmed her musical vision. With keyboardist Diane Labrosse and drummer Danielle Palardy Roger she formed the feminist avant-rock group Wondeur Brass, learning the basics of music during rehearsals. In 1985 the three members were asked to join the collective Ambiances Magnétiques, recently established by Robert Marcel Lepage, René Lussier, André Duchesne, and Jean Derome (the latter would become her life and major musical partner). Wondeur Brass released two critically acclaimed albums in the mid-’80s (Ravir and Simoneda, Reine des Esclaves). Hétu, Labrosse and Roger played in two similar projects, Les Poules and Justine, and toured North-America and Europe.

In 1991, at a time when the volunteer structure of the collective was becoming a burden on the shoulders of its members, Hétu created DAME (Distribution Ambiances Magnétiques Etcetera), a record label/distribution outlet with the aim to regroup local independent avant-garde labels under one roof. Her dedication to the company convinced federal and provincial governments to start subsidizing avant-garde music a little more and the Ambiances Magnétiques catalog began to grow steadily. Meanwhile, she formed her own group Castor et Compagnie in 1992 for which she wrote a repertoire of twisted erotic songs, and performed with many of the other AM members’ projects. In the late 1990s her impetus shifted from avant-gardist songwriting to improvised music with Nous perçons les oreilles (with Derome) and her solo album Seule dans les chants. The beautiful Musique d’hiver showcased her talents as a composer.

Évidence is a jazz trio based in Montréal and solely devoted to the repertoire of Thelonious Monk. Its biggest particularity is its lack of a pianist. Led by Jean Derome on alto saxophone, the group gives highly personal renditions of Monk tunes, illustrating why jazz innovators quickly hailed him as major figure.

Évidence started in 1985 but its roots extend as far back as 1973 when Derome and bassist Pierre Cartier included Monk pieces in the repertoire of their duo “Flûte et Basse.” The idea of a Monk-exclusive formation came from saxophonist Sylvain Leroux in 1982. The group included Cartier and Derome and was named “Mysterioso” (the title of one of the pianist’s tunes, of course). They played the Montréal Jazz Festival that year, before Leroux left to work in the United States. The two remaining members kept things alive and when drummer Pierre Tanguay settled in Montréal in 1985 he was immediately drafted and the unit rechristened Évidence. Other musicians have performed with the trio, including pianist Guillaume Dostaler, clarinetist Jean-Denis Levasseur and drummer Michel Ratté, but most of the time it performs and records as a trio.

For many years, the group remained a hobby for the three musicians, an excuse to get together and revel in Monk’s music. Since each of their rare live appearances seemed to draw a big crowd and sympathetic reviews, they decided to record a studio album. Musique de Thelonious Monk came out in 1993 on the avant-garde music label Ambiances Magnétiques (which Derome co-founded in the early 1980s). It remains to this day one of its most listener-friendly titles. In 1999, Évidence embarked on a series of concerts meant to cover the repertoire in its entirety, but plans failed when the art space Casa Obscura had to close down. A couple of evenings had already taken place and the CD Live à la Casa became the group’s second offering in 2000.

A core member of the late-’70s avant-folk collective Conventum and co-founder of the “musique actuelle” collective and record label Ambiances Magnétiques in the early ’80s, André Duchesne has been both quieter and louder than his acolytes. Quieter because he released albums at the rate of a trickle; louder because his guitar riffs take him closer to the essence of rock than any other AM musician. His recorded output shows interests in avant-prog, rock ’n’ roll, film music, symphonic extravaganzas, free improv and solo classical guitar.

Duchesne is a son of Montréal. He learned the acoustic guitar like most of his teen buddies in the 1970s. But unlike them he was not satisfied with Harmonium and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s strum-along songs. Teaming up with René Lussier, Jean-Pierre Bouchard, Jacques Laurin, Bernard Cormier and poet Alain-Arthur Painchaud he formed Conventum, an influential underground unit that blended Quebec’s folk roots with absurd poetry and progressive arrangements. The group recorded two LPs (À l’affût d’un complot, 1977 and Le bureau central des utopies, 1979).

In 1983 Duchesne, Lussier, Jean Derome and Robert Marcel Lepage threw together the basis of Ambiances Magnétiques, an artist-run label devoted to avant-garde music. His first album to come out was the collection of modern rock songs Le temps des bombes (1984). His next project, more successful, was the four-guitar rock quintet Les 4 Guitaristes de l’Apocalypso-Bar, which included Lussier and Bouchard from Conventum, plus Roger Boudreault and ex-Henry Cow drummer Chris Cutler, from England. This group also recorded two LPs and toured Europe and the US before splitting up.

The early 1990s saw Duchesne active on various fronts. He recorded film music for the Gagné brothers (the soundtrack of “Le Royaume ou l’Asile” is the only one available) and premiered his most ambitious work ever, L’ ou ’L, at the FIMAV festival in Victoriaville in 1990. The orchestral overtones of this piece were soon counterbalanced by the raucous riffs of Locomotive, still Duchesne’s best album and band (with guitarists Claude Fradette and Francis Grandmont, and drummer Rémi Leclerc).

After 1992 Duchesne went very low profile, appearing on albums by modern trad singer Michel Faubert and sporadically putting together rock bands that never recorded (Diesel, No Band’s Land). His 1999 anti-climactic come back Réflexions featured him solo on classical guitar and was not what fans had been hoping for. The 2001 offering Polaroïde is a free improv trio session.