When the young Montréal-based guitarist, Antoine Berthiaume’s first disc came out on Ambiances Magnétiques, it featured Antoine performing duos with both Derek Bailey and Fred Frith, two of the elder statesmen of modern improv guitar. This was quite a surprise to many of us who had not heard of Antoine before this. Since then, Antoine has another fine trio disc out on DAME and has also played a solo set here at DMG last year. He recently came to visit and left us with copies of his new duo disc with a Japanese guitarist named Takumi Seino, another musician with whom I was unfamiliar. This duo disc was recorded live at Big Apple, in Kobe, Japan, in July of 2005. Both of these sonic explorers appear to by using a variety of devices to alter their sound. Antoine often sounds Frith-like with his use of volume swirls but uses other odd devices to come up with different space/rock guitar sounds. Takumi is a well-matched guitarist, although it sounds as if he has a rack of sonic effects, twisting his electronic sounds into all sorts of strange shapes. I am reminded at times of those Frith/Kaiser duos, which don’t sound too much like they are produced by guitars. The title track is a long (nearly 22 minute) epic of cosmic, mesmerizing sounds that should make many space rock & prog-heads smile. Both Antoine and Takumi have fine 10 minute solo pieces that show their unique sound quite well. Both guitarists play lovely pieces which are semi-acoustic works that are quite elegant, melancholy and jazz-like in tone. The final duo, White, Wisps of Red and Blue, features some eerie bowing and variety of bizarre sounds that build into spacious alien worlds. Considering that neither of these guitarists is very well known, this is a most successful duo of extraordinary sonic magicians.

You’ve got to appreciate how Montréal percussionist Michel F Côté can turn on a dime. In early 2005, he delivered the semi-improvisational Mecha Fixes Clock with its crisp electronic percussion moments, an album which sat adjacent to some of his previous experimental work (and some may have captured his early performance at the 2005 FIMAV with local hero Martin Tétreault). But he’s always been a little unpredictable, and that not only highlights his personality, but it especially sums up this cow-poke of an album — crafted with charm, warmth and appreciated escapism.

For all of its trot & swagger, Flat fourgonnette (Mescal free style) strangely brings to mind a flood of gritty inspirations; drawn-out spaghetti westerns, old decrepit vehicles, Ennio Morricone’s free-experimental work (minus the violence and drama), old silly top hats, and the lazy blues of drunken afternoons. I use the adverb “strangely” because this twisted recording somehow manages to delightfully capture the audible portion of an optical illusion, without any overt use of psychedelics. I very much like the way grain-fed insertions of Billy Holiday (or someone similar in depth), Hank Williams and Mississippi John Hurt are mixed into the fold, often sounding as if the group is either playing over the track, or mystically taking its cue from the essence of these performers.

Côté was admittedly influenced by the American songbook for this creation, or rather the folklore of American culture, via an exploratory blend of country and western classicisms (the glockenspiel and the rhythmic cowboy percussion Côté refers to as “cheap foot-rhythms”), playful waltzes (using a cheeky organ or a rolling piano), jazzy flirtations (utilizing the trumpet, trombone and Dixieland vibe), and southern blues atmospherics (notably with the accordion and the liberal use of slide guitars) — served with a distinctive slice of Quebec humor, especially in the spoken introduction to Cheval mort.

One thing is certain, these songs are loose; many are like lazy horses tired from the afternoon sun, periodically hallucinating from a lack of water — sheepishly waiting as their masters soak things up inside the saloon.

Taking on the œuvre of Charles Mingus is a major challenge for any band, especially one led by a bass player. Not only, as in all jazz repertoire efforts, does the group have to avoid slavish imitation, but Mingus’ work also has to be presented with the sort of cocksure aggression that characterized the man himself.

Many musicians have tried to defy these odds, though few have been very successful. There are the various versions of the Mingus Big Band – Sue Mingus, Prop. – that with a bit too much fealty to the bassist’s widow, manage to perpetuate the bassist’s memory with unexpected versions of some of his better and lesser-known work.

Then there’s this left field entry. Organized by Montréal bassist Normand Guilbeault, it features a cross-section of that city’s musique actuelle players in a rare foray into unhyphenated jazz. Perhaps that’s why there’s freshness to these tunes – some of Mingus’ Greatest Hits – that have been played by many over the past four or five decades, and very frequently in the 26 years since the bass man’s death.

Musique actuelle is defined by its practitioners as music of today. Performed, it can have as many references to ProgRock, electronica, movie themes, contemporary, so-called serious music and traditional chansons as jazz and improv. Jean Derome, who plays alto and baritone saxophones and flute here, is involved in many of those mutant forms, yet turns in a surprisingly nuanced and jazzy take on Mingus. At times you could swear the solos are coming from altoist Jackie McLean or baritonist Pepper Adams, some of the legendary bassist’s favored sidemen. MDMD, the one non-Mingus composition here, is Derome’s as well, and cleverly slips in among Chazz’s work without a ripple. Drummer Claude Lavergne and trumpeter and flugelhornist Ivanhoe Jolicoeur have also been mainstays of musique actuelle over the years as has clarinetist Mathieu Bélanger, who brings outstanding atypical textures to this CD, with his standard and alto clarinet excursions on passages usually confined to saxophone reeds.

Of course the compositions’ overriding visualization comes from leader Guilbeault, who has involved himself in this repertoire for about 15 years, and recorded an earlier Mingus tribute a decade ago. Montréal-born, he’s one of the few musique actuelleers with a straight jazz background having played with such local heroes as guitarist Nelson Symonds and drummer Bernard Primeau. He has also worked with Québécois singers, on major projects conceived of by Derome, guitarist René Lussier and percussionist Michel F Côté, his own Parkerouac, wedding poetry and jazz and Riel, a musical about a 19th Century government-executed French-Canadian firebrand.

From inception, the eight tracks of Mingus Erectus balance on the Guilbeault’s rhythmic smarts. But his underpinning is flexible enough to allow Bélanger, Jolicoeur and especially Derome a 21st Century latitude with the tunes. Thus pieces may include multiphonic shout choruses plus sudden shifts of tempo and pitch without every losing the foot-tapping beat. Bélanger’s horn often sounds Québécois street band slurs and glissandi as much as traditional blue notes. Mixing his note-bending with brassy plunger work, Jolicoeur alternately brings to mind Ted Curson and Roy Eldridge, two trumpeters from different generations who recorded with Mingus. This is especially apparent on Conversations, where contrapuntal lines from the horns evolve from call-and-response to individual statements, including the trumpeter’s cascading triplets. All the while Guilbeault keeps up the ostinato, sometimes double-strummed.

On a shrill, almost piccolo-sounding flute, Derome’s cunning enlivens Tijuana Gift Shop, as harmonic convergence with the snorting trumpet lines and near-Dixieland clarinet glisses brings even more of a Latin tinge to the tune. Using a harsh vibrato and a hard reed, Peggy’s Blue Skylight becomes a baritone saxophone feature for Derome, with his stomping vibrato matching the powerful polyphonic bass work and contralto, contrapuntal coloring from the clarinetist.

Another highpoint appears with a recasting of 1959’s Fables of Faubus as 2005’s Fable of (George Dubya) Faubus. Retaining the circus-like mockery of the original –, a barb launched at Arkansas’ then segregationist governor – the Ensemble widens the sarcasm to lambaste the American president’s excursion into Iraq. It’s a technique Mingus often followed himself, taking on Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller and other politicians later in his life.

However, it’s a bit surreal to hear “No more stupid wars” and “Boo George Bush with your evil plan” shouted out in a heavy a Québécois accent. But the instrumental work is at the same high level as the initial recording of the piece and its subsequent recording with Curson and Eric Dolphy. Bélanger’s mellow, chalumeau tone keeps the tune moving forward, as the others provide a wavering countermelody. Derome double-tongues his alto saxophone reed and Jolicoeur growls timbres from deep inside his horn. One of the few Mingus tributes that approaches the passion and commitment of the honoree, Mingus Erectus inculcates a desire to hear Guilbeault and company in other contexts.