Die wortwörtlich aus der Zeit gefallenen Improv-Kompositionen hORs TempS (Ambiances Magnétiques, 5. Dezember 2025) der beiden Frankokanadier Géraldine Eguiluz & Michel F Côté verbinden akustische Elektronik mit Gespieltem und Gefundenem — mal spielerisch übervoll, mal streng im Ausdruck reduziert, meist leicht, oft beinahe Pop, immer musikalisch-ethnologische Grenzen absuchend.

For those not in the know, hORs TempS is a collection of compositions by Géraldine Eguiluz created using music that was recorded on cassettes in Paris in the early 1990s. After actively listening to and processing the original tapes to create mutating collages, they were presented to Michel F Côté so that he could freely interact with them.

Géraldine and Michel thus became ethno-musico-souls, archivists who discover buried sound documents, which they decipher, restore and complete to revive their original meaning and create a new corpus. Each of the pieces in hORs TempS is a forgotten, found and restored treasure, brought back into the world.

This unusual aesthetic encounter generates and highlights a new material that merges with an old music whose essence remains intact. A priori, it authentically expresses Geraldine’s musical, folkloric, poetic and dreamlike research, then in her early twenties. Thirty-five years later, with Michel F Côté, she finds a new fertile land.

Structured around four suites of pieces: “Territoires perdus”, “La montagne”, “Les grands départs” and “Visiteurs”, whose themes are farewells, migrations, spirits, loss, finitude, and, as a backdrop, joy, she opens up this new recording on the rhythmical static of Territoires perdus #1, the steely smooth La montaña y el agua, the jaunty Territoires perdus #2 and both the backwards looped La montaña y el viento and the impassioned Visiteurs #1, before we get the industrial La jeune fille et la vie, the foreboding Les grands départs and the spatially involved Territoires perdus #3.

Along next is the Latin-hued hipsway of Despedida, the frenetically reversed sounds of Visiteurs #2, the resplendently-charged Retrato de mi madre, the playful Territoires perdus #4, and the encompassing La montaña dorada, and they are in turn seamlessly followed by the creatively sculpted piano piece Visiteurs #3, the jaggedly pointed Semilla para el fin del mundo, the new set coming to a close on the echoingly stirring Territoires perdus #5.

For those not in the know, for this fourth album, Hugo Blouin got his friends and family to talk. They told him about their favorite recipes, childhood memories, what they did last week and more. They also talked about art.

He then composed these ten pieces from the repetition of their stories. It is a buffet of extravagant, funny and intimate songs that he had the pleasure of preparing with a group of world-class chefs.

The whole thing is carried by a decadent band, with Eugénie Jobin, John Hollenbeck, Marianne Trudel, Aurélien Tomasi and guests Marion Rampal, Alissa Cheung and Émilie Fortin.

Double bassist and sound artist, Hugo Blouin — and man very much interested in tradition, improvisation and experimentation — opens up this new recording on the frenetically charged Soupe pragmatique (Pragmatic Soup) and the skat-tastic La patate au sucre (The Sugar Potato) before we are next brought forth the smoothly souled Plantée de chemin (Planted with a path), the emotive Après tu manges (After you eat) and the jaggedly electric Un art du temps (An Art of Time).

Along next is the mid-tempo finger-snapper La sauce (The Sauce) and the doleful, yet beautiful Pain-beurre-chocolat (Bread-Butter-Chocolate) and they are in turned followed by the furtively scamp-like Du jazz sérieux (Serious Jazz), the atmospherically soaring Le baril géant (The Giant Barrel), coming to a close on the ardently emboldened Un camion pizza (A pizza truck).

hORs TempS, du duo Géraldine Eguiluz et Michel F Côté, sorti sur Ambiances Magnétiques (label canadien de musique actuelle). Le résultat est un mélange puissant et étrange: instruments acoustiques et électroniques se mêlent à des sonorités réinterprétées et à des traitements atmosphériques, tandis que des thèmes spirituels, ancestraux et personnels s’entremêlent. Résolument inclassable, l’album juxtapose un assortiment de fragments puisés dans différents univers, et, à l’instar des carreaux soigneusement disposés d’une mosaïque, ces pièces individuelles diverses forment un tout cohérent.