Michel F Côté’s most known projects are Bruire and Klaxon Gueule, but he participates in many other musical ventures and collaborates with every avant-garde musician in Montréal. He also writes a lot for the stage and the screen. A drummer in essence, he is nonetheless very versatile both in playing and writing, and that’s what Compil zouave is proving with its eclectic contents dominated by a candid and irreverent mood. On this record, Côté is surrounded by an impressive number of musicians, including his usual Ambiances Magnétiques pals, plus some less regulars like Éric Bernier, Serge Boisvert, Luc Bonin, Normand Guilbeault, Emiko Toguchi and even actor Julien Poulin. Some jazz standards can be spotted, including “Let’s Get Lost,” tastefully mutated, but overall the music is rooted in avant-gardist pop/rock following the Montréal musique actuelle approach. The whole thing takes the form of a musical phantasm, a journey through Côté’s hallucinosis, taking us from one influence to the next without ever clearly defining any of them. The listener goes from the unstable reggae of Verschwinde and Toubab to the collage You’ve Changed (Remix) (nine minutes during which Guy Trifiro samples Côté’s earlier records to show his evolution), to Encore un peu de saké?, taken from the soundtrack to Robert Lepage’s movie Nô.

Compil zouave, even with its many musical tendencies, remains a cohesive record of broad appeal, reminiscent of Robert Marcel Lepage’s Les clarinettes ont-elles un escalier de secours? Destabilizing, less delicate and profound than Bruire, less immediate and challenging than Klaxon Gueule, but quite enjoyable. Recommended.