Finally! The reprint of the CD Upbeat by Fred Frith Guitar Quartet is now avalaible!

The Holidays are closing in. Are you wondering what gifts to buy this year? You’re looking for the original gift, the one that will surprise and please? Why not expand the musical horizons of a loved one, a colleague at work, or a cousin you haven’t seen since last Christmas? Here’s my highly personal selection of gift ideas to introduce someone (or yourself, you’re allowed to indulge from time to time!) to the wonderful world of “musique actuelle.”

That good ol’ song

It may seem a bit easy, but everyone likes a good song. That said, we don’t all have the same definition of what a good song is. And the artists in DAME’s catalog take some liberties with this format — that’s what makes things exciting. But Geneviève Letarte’s Chansons d’un jour will please anyone looking for songs with intelligent, accessible melodies and poetic lyrics. The soft melancholy of Chants des adieux, chants de la solitude will profoundly move dreamers in search of a different voice (Lou Babin’s, irresistible).

You don’t understand French? The lyrics of Jerry Snell’s album Life in the Suicide Riots will make you think hard about the world we live in. And the chugging guitar riffs of André Duchesne ’s Locomotive will catch the attention of any rock fan, even one deaf to French. Speaking of rock, the deconstructed rock of the all-female group Justine can keep you busy for a while, lyrics or no lyrics. Their first album (Suite) is a powerful mixture of progressist rock, while their second Langages fantastiques leans more toward improvised songs. If you want a taste of what songwriting avant-garde artists can come up with, try the compilation album Chante! 1985-2000, a wide and wild selection of unusual songs.

Party time

A time for celebrating, letting off steam, and disobedience, the party when applied to music can give way to a distortion of admitted rules. L’Orkestre des pas perdusinjects a new form of circus life into fanfare music, an infectious R ’n’ B (rhythm ’n’ brass, of course) that will refresh any parade. Its cousin Les Projectionnistes (both bands are led by Claude St-Jean) trades circus for rock and the brass section transforms from funny fanfare to frenetic funk. Taking a different approach, the Fanfare Pourpour leaves the official parade attire behind to favor the spontaneity of a street fanfare. It’s music for “everyone” (Tout le monde, the title of their first album) without dropping to the lowest common denominator.

In a similar spirit, but adding an East-European flavor and an incredible dose of energy is the group Interférence Sardines, which features two members of the neo-trad group Les Batinses. Jean Derome et les Dangereux Zhoms walks a jazzier road, but its frivolous side easily becomes delightfully exuberant. The group’s three albums are all highly recommended, but Carnets de voyage remains an excellent place to start. And I find the same spirit of excessiveness and raw emotion in La boulezaille (Pierre Langevin and Pierre Tanguay) and Plinc! Plonc! (Jean Derome and Pierre Tanguay), two albums where world music, jazz and free improvisation collide.

And to boldly go where few have gone before

Maybe you would like to go further and hook someone on a kind of “musique actuelle” that is more daring and abstract. Here are a few key albums from DAME’s catalogue in improvised and electronic music.

Martin Tétreault is one of the most fascinating experimental artists right now. His technique at the turntable spins 45 questions per minute. His recent album with Diane Labrosse, Parasites, puts disquieting quiet sounds under the microscope. And Studio — Analogique — Numérique, his fresh collaboration with the Japanese mastermind Yoshihide Otomo, proposes cutting-edge sonic research in very original packaging: a box set of three 3” CDs.

A pillar of the avant-garde music scene since the early ‘70s, Fred Frith remains the favorite of many connoisseurs. The two albums by the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet (with René Lussier, Nick Didkovsky and Mark Stewart) are essential listens. DAME also distributes the titles released by Frith’s own Fred Records.

One of the first groups from the DAME stables to have explored electroacoustic improvisation, the Klaxon Gueule trio revels in noisy textures and demanding pleasures. Their last two albums Muets and Grain met critical acclaim. And I also want to mention the Ohmix compilation album, a daring electronic project where select artists (including Martin Tétreault, David Kristian, John Oswald, Terre Thaemlitz, and Ralf Wehowsky) remix the albums of the label Avatar.

Finally, instead of sending out the usual Christmas cards, consider the sound post cards produced by the label Ouïe-Dire. These are regular post cards accompanied by 3” CDs from French experimental artists. And happy Holidays!

Our excitable Executive Editor, or our executive Excitable Editor, Chuck Burns, views this foursome with a suspicious eye: “When they play live,” he says, with his teeth in his mouth and his bare face hanging out (please, you’re frightening our dear readers — Ed. ), >do they overdub the bass and drums after everybody leaves?“ Hmmm, one of those questions that will probably never be answered in our lifetimes. Just as well. Still and all, this mostly live recording (from 1997 gigs in Europe) proves that letting four melodic instruments hang in the air with no root functions can provide for scandalous fun, to say nothing of the fact that Chuck talks too loud. But don’t expect 75 minutes of ants-scrabbling-on-a-lap-guitar noise either; note the easy-rollin’ Red Rag, a Fred Frith composition with delightfully bluesy chording and odd petit mal seizures from René Lussier (to say nothing of Mark Stewart or Nick Didkovsky doubling on kazoo MIDI), or Mark Stewart’s Speedy Feety, which interpolates Commander Cody’s 1974 rockabilly hit, Hot Rod Lincoln. If you’d rather hear Fred and company tear the strings off their guitars and chew on them purposefully, they do that too, say, on Say Slinky. There Nick does his Hendrix-bottom-out slow-motion chainsaw bit (If you remember Jimi’s low Mars Delta guitar growls during the Big Finish of Purple Haze at the Monterey Pop Festival in ’67, you’ll know what I mean. Now that’s a historical command of the instrument) while René keeps blowing the stop-work whistle. To all their credit, no one pays attention. Other evidence of a highly-developed collective sense of humor can be found mid-way through Antaeus, where at one point we seem to have René and Mark imitating dueling grandfather clocks. A completely unrecognizable Out to Bomb Fresh Kings is also good clean fun (except for the central riff which in this version has all its paint blasted off). René’s Tout de suite is a bravura slice of everything the Quartet does well: transistorized flip-flop riffs, everybody else playing 1-2-3 Red Light while Fred chops onions, moments of quiet introspection before the tsunami next door comes calling and bows in the roof. I do wish Stewart had written more for this CD, but Frith is not hard pressed to come up with such gems as No Bones, a loose-limbed country swing (think Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys) deeply buried inside a Shanghai noodle factory (Traffic reference not intended). Most of the heavy equipment is malfunctioning and tossing cogs in all directions. And for those of you who always wondered where Nick D. gets his composition names from, I suspect it’s all those AM cartoons on the WB network: To Laugh Uncleanly at the Nurse (with its garlands of cheery semitonal nonsense and compositional dead ends) is what the Animaniacs do every chance they get on their TV show of the same name. “HEL000000, NURSE!!!“ Ha ha, and you thought he got them from Paul Eluard or Tristan Tzara. Guess it’s proof that watching cartoons does not rot your mind (Don’t your kids read this mag? — Ed. ). Not a chance, Chief. And for more proof that the Quartet all together is no dip at improvising; note Stinky Eye, with its Oriental veneer and decided debt to late period Moby Grape (“Chinese Song,” from their 1975 recording, 20 Granite Creek, on Warner Brothers. Now out of print, may the Warners’ names be blotted out). No, if you were expecting covers of middle-period Anthony Braxton or four stiff guys in stiff tuxedos, get ye hence to Lincoln Center; there may yet be tickets remaining to Wynton Marsalis’ AII Rise. This is improvisational. This is music of the moment, and essential for modern guitar fans. And no, nobody plays bass.

In addition to their ability to compose memorable lines of music (and song titles), the members of the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet—Frith, Nick Didkovsky, Mark Stewart and René Lussier—share a passion for exploring the sonic possibilities of the amplified guitar. Indeed, Up Beat is characterized in equal parts by catchy phrases and speaker-shredding sound. Recorded in Europe, live and in the studio during 1997, Up Beat gives each of the members a solo spot along with the close, if discordant, harmony of the quartet. Thereal power of the band is that none of the players seem to have forgotten the fun of plugging in an electric guitar for the first time. When they all pick up on an idea and begin extrapolating —as ln the middle of Stewart’s Manic Speedy Feety —it’s a guitar-lover’s dream come true.

Le leader étant une espèce d’aventurier génial de l’instrument, qui a tout essayé, et continue toujours d’animer son monde musical imaginaire. A eux quatre, ils déboulent dans un univers impitoyable, où tout est bouleversé, saccagé, mis en pièces, mais en même temps drôlatique, surprenant, où le côté inventif, déroutant, possède un climat fascinant. Musique inclassable, mais d’une actualité brûlante.

Depuis maintenant trente ans, Fred Frith règne en maître-guitariste sur cette scène motivante dite des musiques improvisées. Fort d’une production certes inégale mais marquée par quelques sommets comme Speechless ou Step Across The Border, l’Anglais aujourd’hui quinquagénaire n’a pas son pareil pour triturer sa guitare ou son violon avec la curiosité d’un apprenti sorcier. Alors que d’autres confrères sont parfois très très loin des préoccupations de leurs auditeurs, au premier rang desquelles le plaisir, le bonhomme lasse rarement. Car il ne se sépare jamais primo de son humour et secundo d’un canevas très personnel et vaguement folklorique, fil conducteur d’une vraie histoire qui évite les pièges et méandres de la recherche pure. La preuve est livrée avec ce deuxième album de son Guitar Quartet, avec René Lussier, Nick Didkovsky et Mark Stewart. Mélange d’enregistrements studio et de morceaux live, Upbeat est une exploration ludique de l’improvisation electrique sur quatre fois six cordes: ambiances distordues, ragtime foireux, énervement punky, et quelques grands moments comme Motormouth ou No Bones. A consommer sans modération, mais en toute connaissance de cause.