Many musicians and ensembles from the Ambiances Magnétiques label will take part in the 12th Guelph Jazz Festival (Ontario), to be held from September 7 — 11, 2005. Acts featured in this forthcoming edition include L’Ensemble Pierre Labbé on September 7; the trio of André Duchesne, Jean René and Pierre Tanguay as well as the Pierre Cartier Ensemble on September 8; Lori Freedman solo and the trio Évidence on September 9; and finally, the Fanfare Pourpour will parade through the city on September 10.

You are invited to one of Jean Derome’s Canot-camping (“Canoe Camping”) expeditions, each of them a musical composition for ensemble. A system of hand signs is used by {nbio:derome_je} to steer the musicians — and the public — into a beautiful and wild adventure. {nbio:derome_je} and the Ensemble SuperMusique awaits you on September 24 and 25, 2005 at the King Edward Pier in the Old Port of Montréal.

Down since Wednesday evening August 17, 2005, our website and our emails are again fully operational since Friday evening August 19, 2005. A server attack caused this interruption. If you have tried to join us by email and your message bounced, you can now write again. We are sorry for all these inconvenients, thank you for your comprehension.

A Global Taxonomical Machine is fascinating. It is unique. It is intelligently, carefully crafted.

However, that doesn’t mean you’re going to enjoy listening to it.

Art with a capital A, this collection of electronic sound collages and vast silences would have been confrontational a decade ago by virtue of its almost total lack of recognizable musical elements. In 2005, most listeners who don’t buy their music at Wal-Mart are at least passingly aware of minimalism and sparse electronica, so Taxonomy aren’t exactly offering a wholly revolutionary concept. It turns out you can get a pretty cool experience without melody or harmony. We already knew that.

Still, if you’re willing to invest the effort it requires and deserves, A Global Taxonomical Machine can be quite absorbing — full of static, fuzz, subliminal clicks and sharp, modem-like sounds. On the rare occasion that something resembling a melody comes into focus, you’ll latch onto it like a long-lost sailor to land.

Still, a few elements, like the five minutes of complete silence that comes midway through the record, are a little too artsy for their own good. Stuff like that is the main reason you can’t expect A Global Taxonomical Machine to provide a conventional reward; what you get out of it will be determined entirely by what you put in.

Part of L’OFF Jazz events in Rimouski (Québec), Martin Tétreault and his French guests Jean-Luc Guionnet and Pascal Battus will play at the Paralœil gallery in Rimouski on August 26, 2005 and at La Capitainerie in Matane on August 27, 2005.