The second disc, Chants rupestres, is quite a different proposition, because it is essentially programmaric. The titles of the 15 tracks resemble primitive-looking hieroglyphs and are virtually impossible to reproduce here. To quote the short insert blurb, this is “quartet born of haircovered and primeval sinew; cave music, prehistoric ageless and archaic. Casting our thinking about music back 100,000 years, perhaps to its very birth, to those first true pioneering musical experimenters, our ancestors.
Given much of the debate raging these days about reclaiming musics of the past, one has to commend drummer Michel F. Côte for outdoing everybody in that department, yet one has to wonder if there is some sort of underlying irony also at work in this. In this most unusual project of his group “Bruire”, he produces an imaginary primitive music with the help of bassist Normand Guilbeault, reedist Jean Derome (on baritone sax throughout, an appropriate horn to capture the lumbering ways often attributed to our earliest ancestors) and Martin Tétreault (whose turntable playing blends so seamlessly into the whole). As in the first disc reviewed, it’s unlikely that there are compositions worked out in any pre-ordained or notated ways, but there are definite frameworks which allow for collective structuring and individual expression alike. In the 48 minutes of this disc, this musical project not only succeeds in tweaking our imaginations, but also offers a welcome antiddote to the masses of nimble-fingered musical demonstrations heard in every musical style, jazz and free improv included.
