In Ken Kesey’s widely-read One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, the antagonist — the hatchet faced Nurse Ratched — is depicted as a spider, ‘in the centre of her web (of) wires like a watchful robot… with mechanical insect skill, (knowing) every second which wire runs where and just what current to send up to get what she wants…’. Just one letter (and much sadism) removed from this creation, the Ratchet Orchestra resembles a similarly organised regime.

As exercises in man-management go, this chamber jazz band is an ambitious proposition indeed. Having burgeoned from a handful to some 30 Montréal musicians of the first water over the last decade and a half, the logistical and democratic considerations of distributing them evenly over a mere 9 pieces (most of which hover around the 5-minute mark) fries my mental circuits. But the task is ably executed by leader Nicolas Caloia as he provides a showcase for all but preferential treatment to none. As a result of such exacting exigencies, there’s nary a moment wasted by this muscular unit: from careful canter to clattering cacophony, the only sound phenomenon left unexplored is silence, though you’ll probably look into that one once the CD has ended.

Being a big band jazz unit with an unabashed devotion to Sun Ra (they first celebrated his birthday in 1998), their sound will evoke little surprise: loping woodwinds provide a launchpad for the shriller excesses of the horn section; a soaring string section melts in the warm buzz and burble of a mute trumpet while an electric piano takes the stairs; a spidery, skittering fuzz guitar becomes swiftly serrated from climbing too many grass blades — hacks and slices at everything around it. Walt Disney is invoked and banished. Keeping shy of the minute barrier, a roustabout plays the cup & ball game with the words KICK, MAN & HABIT. Everything roars and fades with finality.

Though the musical motifs of Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane and the like are distinctive, this is not to say it’s an exercise in emulation — far from it. That said, if the group’s star-bound curiosity fails to ignite the transcendent inner dimensions of its forbearers, it’s precisely for the reason that it lacks the spiritual discipline: working to a timetable, no one has more than their allotted 5 minutes to shine, both as individuals and team players. The 9 tracks constitute a collection (a very varied one, albeit), rather than a narrative. Thus, the Ratchet Orchestra resolves itself as an exercise in short-term showmanship, in which respect it fulfils its mandate admirably. Appreciate this detail and you’ll walk away the winner.

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Joane Hétu’s La Femme territoire ou 21 fragments d’humus is a multi disciplinary piece dedicated to the female experience; sex, death, loss, and the joy of life itself enjoy aural designation on these 21 tracks. Hétu wrings limitless emotion from a myriad of sources with the help of Susanna Hood, Jean Derome, Isaiah Ceccarelli, and Alice Tougas St-Jak. Voice, accordion, woodwinds, and strings interact with field recordings, electronics, and spectral percussion, which in addition to prose and dance add up to a varied and complex work. Every facet of the piece is informed by an avant garde aesthetic as elements of free jazz, musique concrète, and early electronic composition support a vocal narrative that is an intense world of sound unto itself. The vocalists scream, mumble, whisper, and growl (not to mention actually sing), expressing an incredible range of emotion and timbre, even when the words are free of their literal meaning. I do not speak French, so I am missing an entire dimension of this recording, but it’s quite a rich listening experience regardless.

These diverse elements repeatedly coalesce into sublime vignettes, such as on L’amoureuse, which is a tour de force of vocal gymnastics. Male and female voices advance the limits of human ability beginning with broken, sputtering non-language that closely resembles the bushmen’s chatter from The Gods Must Be Crazy. This particular “fragment” alternates between passages of unison recitation and extended vocal and musical techniques before resolving into a dizzying climax of whispering. Fragment amour saunters in like an elephant on roller skates with alien sounds that could be air escaping a balloon or tape manipulation, followed by sensuous breath and arcing, bent saxophone notes. Nue features interesting moments where unison voices strike harmonies with each other and produce chords that eventually waver in and out of pitch. The song eventually falls into a dissonant refrain before returning to more vocal harmonizing. This CD is remarkable in every way, with an exceptional recording capturing some truly remarkable pieces of sound art. Not to be missed.

Fortner Anderson est un poète performer originaire du Midwest américain vivant à Montréal. Un exil qui dure et qui a trouvé plusieurs connexions dont celle avec la bouillonnante scène montréalaise autour des activités du lieu La Casa del Popolo, qui a vu naitre notamment les projets autour du groupe post-rock-progressif Godspeed you! black emperor. Des connexions aussi avec sa scène des musiques électroacoustiques via des collaborations avec Alexandre St-Onge et Sam Shalabi. Quatrième disque à son actif, Annunciations est construit sur un système de “commande”, un peu comme le disque de Thurston Moore Root (lo-recordings, cd/lp, 1999) sur lequel le guitariste convoque trente artistes à remixer des parties guitares créées par Thurston pour l’occasion. La variante ici est que l’on a donné des textes à lire au poète et qui ont ensuite été remis à plusieurs artistes issus principalement des sphères des musiques électroacoustiques au sens large: Ned Bouhalassa, Andy Williamson, Christian Calon, Nicolas Bernier, Martine Crispo, Chantal Dumas, Alessandro Bosetti, Christian Kesten et John Berndt pour en faire bien sur bon usage, dans des créations sonores qui sonnent évidemment poésie sonore et musique électroacoustique. Trois cd encartonnés et un livre (que je n’ai pas eu avec la copie promo et dont je ne peux évidemment moins vous parler). Une présentation à s’y méprendre avec les structures en place telles DAME et Empreintes Digitales. Nous ne sommes malgré tout pas véritablement dans de la poésie sonore telle qu’on l’entend (ne vous attendez pas à du Paul Dutton par exemple), mais plus dans de la lecture, dans le spoken word. Lecture de textes choisis à tendance environnementale et politique. Autour de textes sur les changements climatiques, sur Guantanamo ou encore sur des rapports de missions spatiales, Fortner Anderson a toutefois réinterprété ces textes sous une forme poétique. Surtout sur la pièce de Chantal Dumas, It’s a small world. Celle d’Alessandro Bosetti est plus que surprenante, virant chanson minimale proche de Ghedalia Tazartés ou David Fenech, voire Robert Wyatt. Quand je vous dit surprenant. Dans l’écoute chronologique des trois cds, cette pièce It Is Amazing (C’est surprenant, en français, ndlr) (Gesualdo’s waterboarding) tombe à pic. Et annonce le meilleur cd des trois. Non pas que je m’ennuie, mais pas forcément surpris jusque là. Dû surement aussi au texte pas facile à digérer puisque très pregnant, pour nous non-anglophones. Donc on s’en remet au sonore, qui lui était jusque là un peu formel, sans éclat. Décidément ce troisième cd compile les trois pièces les plus expérimentales, celle de Christian Kesten avec un vrai remix et un travail sur les hésitations et le souffle naturel de Fortner Anderson, qui prend à contre-pied tout le monde, personne n’y ayant pensé jusque là. Pour finir sur une composition plus tendue par John Berndt. Parfois proche du spoken word de Jello Biafra (ex Dead Kennedys) qui a lui aussi travaillé sur Guantanamo sur son disque Jello Biafra & the Guantanamo School of Medicine, voire Henry Rollins. J’ai mis beaucoup de temps à essayer de comprendre ce disque. Pas véritablement facile d’accès pour moi. Bien content malgré tout d’avoir insisté et découvert ce formidable troisième disque.

Characterized by Americans as polite northern cousins who enjoy universal health care and little gun violence, Yanks don’t appreciate the current of outright quirkiness that courses through many Canadian endeavors, especially when it comes to creative music. It may be because Canuck popsters from Paul Anka to Justin Bieber as well as the likes of Rush and Joni Mitchell are quickly subsumed into the Yank music industry, but remembering that comedians such as Jim Carrey and Mike Myers hail from North of the 49th parallel may provide a glimpse of some Canadians’ mindsets.

Take for instance the releases here. During the performance by Montréal’s Ratchet Orchestra conducted by Nicolas Caloia, the group wraps textures from a legato string section around not only multifold rhythms referencing rock and Latin music, but strong soloists and eccentric arrangements that would be at home in any contemporary big band. Often intimations of one genre are quickly superseded by the next. Dusty for instance appears ready to become A Train until altissimo reed squeals that could come from Sun Ra’s Arkestra meld with gutbucket trombone slurs and cross-pulsed guitar passages to dissolve and reconfigure the theme. Similarly near-baroque flute flutters, harmonized with linear clarinet puffs and vibraharp pulsations which make up the moderato and legato melody on Safety move out of their safety zone as quivering horn vibrations or string glissandi menacingly and contrapuntally color or comment on the exposition. Although other tracks centre around exciting strategies ranging from marching-band replications to a face-off between Afro-Cuban percussion and triple spiccato string lines, the session-defining showcase is the two-part title track. Resounding from earth-shaking vibrations to those which could baffle a dog’s hearing, cacophonous and multiphonic smears, screeches and whistles pull back to reveal nuanced finger-style guitar licks and vibrating electric piano lines. Hearty percussion thumps are muted and horn squeaks fades until a final spiritual-like lyric line from a single violinist signals the end point. […]

Each of these notable discs could destroy any outsider’s supposition about the conventionality of Canadian created music. As a matter of fact it may cause jazzers to wonder just what a Canuck has in his or her instrument case.