You may know Quebec-based François Couture for his work as a reviewer of experimental music for his blog Monsieur Delire. He stopped this blog in 2015. One of his last sentences on his blog: “After 20 years of journalism, I finally felt ready to make music instead of writing and talking about other people’s music”. And ends announcing his first musical statement Spam Me, “based on comments published by spambots on this blog through the years”. Why wait so long I asked myself after having a good time with this record which I found a very amusing and worthwhile trip. Yes Couture is ready to make his own statement. The ‘songs’ are constructed from field recordings, noisy textures and some added instruments, plus let’s not forget the voice of Couture. There is a pleasant free anarchistic spirit at work here. Some of the stuff is hilarious, some of it deadly serious. In each track Couture plays a variety of instruments and is helped out by one or more of his mates. Most of the compositions are by Couture. The rest mentions other players as co-writers. Tracks like Moncler Uomo start from a classical Canterbury-RIO aesthetic. Also the title track is evidently inspired from this tradition. Osady Sciekowe again sounds very European and brings Peter Hammill to my mind. Other tracks like the opening piece Payday Loans are a noisy collage, or of a very different nature. You Left Me and You Took All of My Hammill Records, Baby, Now I’m All Alone with My VDGG Cold-Turkey Blues is the most abstract track on this record. A sound work of flutes, voices and objects. To conclude, Couture takes some very directions on his debut album. Whatever he is doing his music is organic, spirited and enjoying.

Jürg Frey belongs to the Wandelweiser group of composers, who tend to write slow, quiet, sparse music, interspersed with significant silences. Frey’s Third Quartet is to some extent a typical Wandelweiser creation, with dynamic markings that range from pp to ppppp. Less typical is the whispery voluptuousness of the harmony, which sometimes recalls Schreker or early Schoenberg. This is music of enveloping mystery and enigmatic beauty.

Je savais (eh, j’ai bonne mémoire!) qu’Éric Normand était bassiste c’est pourquoi quand j’ai entendu les premières secondes de son Mattempa j’ai eu peur qu’il soit passé à la trompette ou au saxophone et qu’il s’y essaye en solo au chiantissime canardage de salive. Mais en fait non. Sur cette œuvre (la première d’une série) inspirée par l’écrivain Jacques Ferron (1921-1985), Normand dirige des amis à tour de (clé de?) bras: Raphaël Arsenault (violon), Antoine Létourneau-Berger (percussions), Philippe Lauzier (clarinette basse et sax soprano) et Alexandre Robichaud (trompette de poche).

Nos musiciens s’en trouvent embarqués sur des compositions inspirées par «le» Gaspé-Mattempa de Ferron dont un extrait est retranscrit. Mystérieux, le texte = mystérieuse, la musique. C’est une drôle d’ambiance, pour dire la vérité, qui plane et que peuvent faire éclater (mais seulement le temps de leur durée) une mélodie jouée ensemble par les vents ou un pas de deux improvisé. C’est en tout cas un bel hommage (de Normand à Ferron) et une belle découverte (que ce Normand et que ce Ferron).