Turntablist Martin Tétreault invites you to an interesting retrospective. A century of jazz history, all in music. With Pierre Tanguay (percussions) and Jean Derome (saxophone), at the Cheval blanc (Montréal), September 23 and 30, 2002.

Originally part of an arts project from 1986, Les contes de l’amère loi is a remastered re-release of one of the odder sections of keyboard-heavy strangepop that you’re likely to hear. Les Poules are a three-piece with largely-electronic instrumentation, and their album seems to mine the “there’s something not quite right here” vein pretty heavily. Shades of music-for-insane-royalty flow through the disc, particularly when it dips into the sort of tonal palette favoured by Drew Neumann’s score for Aeon Flux — a cross between high-tech and high-cheese.

At times sounding like a couple of kids fumbling on an old Casio, Les Poules display a naive approach to music-making that pays off immensely; the simplicity of children’s television soundtracks is invoked, only with a sense of something darker involved. The sense of an unbalanced world is perhaps best described in Chanson du pain, which sounds like it was ripped out of an episode of Inspector Gadget. There’s slightly jaunty, slightly creepy synthwork, and upbeat harmonies… sung about a missing — only to conclude with the thought that it’d be nice if she returned, because the narrator’s getting hungrier and skinnier. It’s like an evil fairy tale, and portrays the best part of the album: the sense of unease that permeates some kinds of happiness, the same sort of thing that makes some people terrified of clowns. Whatever that lurking horror is, it’s here in spades.

In short, you should really check this disc out; it’s got enough weirdness to keep any Bungle-head occupied. Scratchings beyond its dayglo carny sleeve will reveal a delightful darkness.

This is something of a concept album. The liner notes — after a musician’s roll call, natch — begin with a small note from vocalist Marie-Hélène Montpetit about a hotel by the sea, where songs batter against memories of departure. If you’re a victim of the language barrier — the vocals here are all in French — there’s nothing to worry about: the mood is accurately (almost too plainly, given that some tunes come across as being as formulaic as stadium rock) conveyed by the fine playing on show here.

Musically, the album doesn’t break much out of the smooth jazz mode. By smooth, I don’t mean Kenny G: I mean smooth in terms of that laid-back, late-night languor that suffuses many discs. Nobody appears to be working too hard here, but that’s fine in the surrounds; nobody really expects Ketil Bjornstad to be turning all Jerry Lee Lewis on us anytime soon, either. Meditative is the key word; Blues du troisième étage<|b> features some fantastically introspective contrabass work by Normand Guiltbeault that really guides the tune. For the most part, Pierre St-Jak’s piano dominates the tunes. Occasional incursions by guests (L’hôtel… are normally a four-piece, here expanded to eight) add fire and polish to the action — the song Un homme à la mer sounds like mid-era Pink Floyd gone jazz with some fantastic harmonizing — but mostly, it’s the almost-Debussy tones that guide the album. Occasionally, unluckily, it’s towards a slightly soporific destination.