These pieces by Géraldine Eguiluz originally resided on cassettes in Paris in the early ‘90s, and after being presented to Michel F Côté they were restored and reworked into these expressive 16 tracks.

Territoires perdus #1 opens with raw vocals and plenty of percussive sounds that carries a tribal spirit, and La montaná el agua follows with hazy synth and a slow groove that emits a haze of warmth.

Further along, La jeune fille et la vie pairs dissonant ideas with unpredictable keys and wordless vocals, while Despedida throbs a bit amid the melodic keys and ethereal vocals alongside much intimacy.

Close to the end, La montana dorada uses distinct vocal inflections and plenty of background noisesmakers, and Territoires perdus #5 exits with a mesmerizing quality that blends brass into the adventurous finish.

The duo handle so many instruments here it’s dizzying, where the 4 larger pieces surround farewells, migrations, spirits, loss, finitude, and even joy, and it comes from a very artistic, spiritual and acoustic and electronic angle that’s fascinating.

Reversed tape loops, strummed micro gestures and percussive elements sourced from increasingly esoteric places encircle some­thing less akin to a pulse than some greater subtextual unifying logic. The source of these seemingly endless subtle sonic events — be it primary or found — does not grab you as much as the question of their seamless coexistence.

This is music that journeyed quite a ways to get here; somehow all that you are hearing is born from the early 1990s when Géraldine Eguiluz was in Paris, and recorded some sounds on cassettes. Returning to one’s work after a prolonged span of time can perhaps come with an inherent freshness and Eguiluz warped, molded, deconstructed, recontext­ualized and eroded the sounds on these tapes through collage which is another category of introspective creation. Take Territoires perdus #3 for instance, where from a handful of vocal tracks stem harmonies that feel like they are only attained through this medium, as sustained breathy backgrounds envelop heavily edited streams of gibberish, creating a unique atmosphere of uncanniness and one of the many inscrutably hyper specific feel­ings achieved throughout this project. Adding Michel F Côté ostensibly adds an entire additional process to the creative mix, as he is another universe in himself with all the audial information he is able to generate through countless means. Around track five, the “how” becomes less enthralling than the “what.”

Lavorare sulla memoria dandole una forma uguale e diversa nella contemporaneità. Si può fare strutturando aree tematiche quali le migrazioni, gli spiriti, la perdita, la finitezza e l’addio. Il tutto legato, che magnifica intenzione, dalla gioia.

Convenuto su questo, si dividono sedici brani in quattro suite che arrivano dall’elaborazione di registrazioni su nastro effettuate a Parigia inizio anni Novanta.

È un progetto che definire inusuale è riduttivo, in quanto tra field recording, artrock, inserti electro, pop, psych e sperimentali risulta inclassificabile. Affascinante.

Die wortwörtlich aus der Zeit gefallenen Improv-Kompositionen hORs TempS (Ambiances Magnétiques, 5. Dezember 2025) der beiden Frankokanadier Géraldine Eguiluz & Michel F Côté verbinden akustische Elektronik mit Gespieltem und Gefundenem — mal spielerisch übervoll, mal streng im Ausdruck reduziert, meist leicht, oft beinahe Pop, immer musikalisch-ethnologische Grenzen absuchend.

For those not in the know, hORs TempS is a collection of compositions by Géraldine Eguiluz created using music that was recorded on cassettes in Paris in the early 1990s. After actively listening to and processing the original tapes to create mutating collages, they were presented to Michel F Côté so that he could freely interact with them.

Géraldine and Michel thus became ethno-musico-souls, archivists who discover buried sound documents, which they decipher, restore and complete to revive their original meaning and create a new corpus. Each of the pieces in hORs TempS is a forgotten, found and restored treasure, brought back into the world.

This unusual aesthetic encounter generates and highlights a new material that merges with an old music whose essence remains intact. A priori, it authentically expresses Geraldine’s musical, folkloric, poetic and dreamlike research, then in her early twenties. Thirty-five years later, with Michel F Côté, she finds a new fertile land.

Structured around four suites of pieces: “Territoires perdus”, “La montagne”, “Les grands départs” and “Visiteurs”, whose themes are farewells, migrations, spirits, loss, finitude, and, as a backdrop, joy, she opens up this new recording on the rhythmical static of Territoires perdus #1, the steely smooth La montaña y el agua, the jaunty Territoires perdus #2 and both the backwards looped La montaña y el viento and the impassioned Visiteurs #1, before we get the industrial La jeune fille et la vie, the foreboding Les grands départs and the spatially involved Territoires perdus #3.

Along next is the Latin-hued hipsway of Despedida, the frenetically reversed sounds of Visiteurs #2, the resplendently-charged Retrato de mi madre, the playful Territoires perdus #4, and the encompassing La montaña dorada, and they are in turn seamlessly followed by the creatively sculpted piano piece Visiteurs #3, the jaggedly pointed Semilla para el fin del mundo, the new set coming to a close on the echoingly stirring Territoires perdus #5.

Released via the long-standing Canadian label that is Ambiances Magnetiques as their cat.no. 284 on December 5th, 2k25 is hORs TempS, an — albeit rather unusual — collaborational album effort created by Geraldine Eguiluz and Michael F Cote which is based on a collection of early 90s cassette recordings by Eguiluz newly re-arranged into collages by herself before being further fragmented, enhanced, twisted, overdubbed, complimented and re-splintered by Cote to end up in a final form — this album. With a total of sixteen pieces rolled out over the course of roughly 42 minutes hORs TempS caters a highly fascinating and highly complex amalgamation of almost ritualistic Field Recordings with a Tribal attitude (Territoires Perdus #1), ethereal Freak Folk backed by eerie reverse tape loops (La Montana Y El Agua), glitches, cut-ups and Musique Concrete references, ghostly inner city Jazz (La Montana Y El Viento), dark and deeply nocturnal pieces with score’esque qualities like the ominous Les Grands Departs with its slightly dusty vintage feel and slightly off-kilter minor piano tones, echoes of Industrial, FoundSound and even bits of a chanson’esque attitude to be found in Despedida whereas cuts like La Montana Dorada open with a captivating melodic grandeur before defragmenting into a million Free Improv x Free Jazz informed details just to name a few. Highly interesting and defo an album to reveal a plethora of hidden layers over the course of many a listening session to come. And probably one speaking to all those who still remember the ’Ekkehard Ehlers Plays… ’ -series released via the Staubgold label in the early noughties which catered a similarly intimate and collage’esque overall feel at the time. Recommended.

I like albums that surprise me greatly. They turn all forms of sound expression upside down, gutting them, as if taking the best parts from different genres of music and ultimately creating fascinating works from them. Such is certainly the case with the album hORs TempS by Géraldine Eguiluz and Michel F Côté.

Géraldine Eguiluz is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, vocalist, improviser, poet, and painter. She was born in Mexico, grew up in Bogota, Lisbon, and Paris, and emigrated to Quebec in 2006, where she became part of the improvisational scene. She has collaborated with many artists and projects in various areas of sound. Michel F Côté is a percussionist, improviser, and composer also involved in theater, film, and dance. In 2022, he published the book Danses à venir, written in collaboration with Catherine Lavoie-Marcus, on the art of choreography. He is responsible for various musical projects, including Quatuor Minéraliste, Bruire, and Klaxon Gueule.

The album hORs TempS was created from a collection of compositions by Géraldine Eguiluz, which the artist recorded in Paris in the 1990s. After processing them, she handed them over to Michel F Côté to undergo his deconstruction process. The material is a surreal vision, flickering and surprising from track to track. At times, it sounds like an abstract form from which all magical elements have been extracted. What we have here is an image of filtered and mutated collages combining different musical worlds, destroyed fragments of forgotten songs, avant-garde exotica, ceremonial ethno, noisy retro jazz, electroacoustics, and concrete music dressed in multicolored regions of sonic aberrations.

hORs TempS is a document whose core consists of raw, archaic melodies thrown into transgressive creative processes. Deconstructed, revived, and merged in a kind of mystical ritual of an abstract nature. It is astonishing and fascinating to find the purpose of each of these compositions. They are intriguing and possess an extraordinary soul of creativity. I strongly encourage you to decipher this enigmatic puzzle.

Translated from Polish.

hORs TempS, du duo Géraldine Eguiluz et Michel F Côté, sorti sur Ambiances Magnétiques (label canadien de musique actuelle). Le résultat est un mélange puissant et étrange: instruments acoustiques et électroniques se mêlent à des sonorités réinterprétées et à des traitements atmosphériques, tandis que des thèmes spirituels, ancestraux et personnels s’entremêlent. Résolument inclassable, l’album juxtapose un assortiment de fragments puisés dans différents univers, et, à l’instar des carreaux soigneusement disposés d’une mosaïque, ces pièces individuelles diverses forment un tout cohérent.