Noma è il nome del progetto — giunto qui alla seconda prova su disco — del trombonista Tom Walsh, un curioso campo di battaglie musicali dove attorno al “centro Walsh” si fronteggiano un trio jazz e un trio di funk elettrico, in uno scambio voracissimo e proficuo di materiali variamente strutturati. Rarefazioni di suoni trovati, improvvise accensioni di grooves, le chitarre elettriche spesso piegate in sprazzi lamentosi, il trombone mimetico del leader e un bilanciamento attento dei livelli contribuiscono a una musica in continuo movimento. Undici i brani, ma le tracce sono ben trentadue, per non perdere mai di vista la tessitura. (7)

Il trio composto dal sassofonista e flautista Jean Derome con il contrabbassista Normand Guilbeault e la fantastica verve batteristica di Pierre Tanguay è una formazione ben conosciuta nei jazz club di Montréal e le dieci composizioni – scritte nell’arco dell’ultimo trentennio – che troviamo in questo bellissimo disco sono la testimonianza viva e palpitante che anche questo lato più schiettamente jazz di Derome è di grande valore. Una musica che guarda ovviamente a Thelonious Monk – che Derome aveva omaggiato con il gruppo Evidence – ma che sa rielaborare diversi piani e livelli della storia del jazz, Ornette Coleman, Jimmy Giuffre, Steve Lacy… in una serie di raffinatissime triangolazioni, dalle sensualità evocate da L’Africaine all’irresistibile baritono di “Pangolin”, tra visioni swing e leggerezze flautistiche, insofferenze free e magnifici momenti collettivi. Un disco superbo, c’è da sperare che gli appassionati di jazz imparino a mettere più spesso il naso da queste parti. (8/9)

Dix compositions aux ambiances profondes, signées Jean Derome, et trois musiciens d’exception, voilà ce que nous présente la première trace phonographique du trio Derome, Guilbeault, Tanguay. Nos compères se connaissent depuis longtemps et cela s’entend. La rythmique soudée de Tanguay et de Guilbeault permet à Jean Derome de construire des improvisations enivrantes. Bravo pour ce jazz rayonnant de musicalité, de swing charnu et de mélodies rocailleuses.

Quand un poète se met à la chanson (on pense a Péloquin, Francoeur ou, plus près de nous, Marc LeMyre), il vaut toujours la peine de tendre l’oreille. Parce que chez ces gens-là, comme disait Brel, on est sensible a la musicalité des mots.

La quarantaine bien entamée, une poignée de recueils de poésie en librairie et deux albums de poésie chantée à son actif, Frank Martel s’inscrit dans cette singulière lignée. S’il ne risque pas de concurrencer Bruno Pelletier sur le plan vocal (qui s’en plaindrait?), Martel assume ses limites en choisissant des styles — cabaret, country où l’interprétation prime sur la performance.

Récent récipiendaire d’un Mimi (les Félix de la scène alternative québécoise — pour ceux qui, comme moi, n’étaient pas dans le coup), Sautons ce repas du midi (Ambiances magnétiques/SRI) est de ces albums joyeusement déconcertants, qui méritent d’être prolongés sous les projecteurs, ne serait-ce que pour voir la tête de Martel quand il balance des perles du genre «Chu toujours dans tes jambes/Mais jamais dans tes bras», avec sa voix de Cassonade Faulkner. Faussement naïf? Peut-être. Vraiment attachant? You bet!

Vancouver meets Montréal! Ron Samworth (electric guitar) and Dylan van der Schyff (drums) from Vancouver join forces with Bernard Falaise (electric guitar) and Pierre Tanguay (drums) from Montréal. Ron Samworth and Dylan van der Schyff are leading figures of the Vancouver new music/improv scene with connections to the likes of George Lewis, Louis Sclavis, Vinny Golia, Barry Guy, Evan Parker and involvement in the NOW Orchestra, Hard Rubber Orchestra, François Houle ensembles and many more. Bernard Falaise and drummer Pierre Tanguay are Montréal composers and improvisers associated with television, theatre, dance, Les Projectionnistes, Dangereux Zhoms, etc. In a word all four of them are improvisers with great expertise and reputation. On this first meeting all four members of this quartet — or double duo if you want — demonstrate a similar interest in improv and improv rock. They talk the same language. Subtle and quiet passages on the one hand, intense and noisy and quasi-melodic outbursts at the other. We hear some very nice battles, like between the two guitarists in Oh My!. In general the interplay between the four is very concentrated and rich. All four take part in the sound explorations, so that one can say it’s really a well-balanced group improvisation. Together they lay down a wide spectrum of sounds extracted from their instruments through a diversity of extended techniques and attributes.

Often detached, dusty and irrevocably divorced from the context in which they were hatched, live albums tend to be museum-quality the moment they leave the mastering suite. Occasionally, though, a concert recording escapes the hobbling likelihood of staid sexlessness and captures as much animated verve as any studio project. Take Robert Lepage’s collaboration with Montréal’s La Nef. This three-part extravaganza, recorded at Quebec’s premier new music festival in March of 2003, begins with an eclectic cache of instrumental textures and ends with a portable version of Lepage’s most recent opus, which loses almost nothing in translation.

La Machine…’s thematic premise is simple. The composition begins with three idiomatic understandings of time (time passes, time flies, time slips by — called “Paradoxes” here) and uses each to guide a long musical movement from the outlands of avant-inscrutability home to the motherland of meaning. The result is stunning. Aided by La Nef, an ensemble of ten (including common chamber instruments and percussion, as well as guitar, banjo, tenor sax, viola da gamba, sackbut and live sampling) spools out the instrumentally dense compositions. The sheer conglomeration of the ensuing sounds would be enough to snare the open minds of many a curious listener, but the resonant respect for the audience inherent in Lepage’s complicated composition truly wins the day.

After an introductory address spoken in French over a pastiche of cuckoos, whistles and other frenetic clock noise, Confitures de sable eases in the proceedings with an armature of swaying, repetitious bass, splashing auxiliary percussion and gentle string swells. Loosely played flute and brass wash across the foundation with gentle, exploratory touch of a lover in patient heat. Then, like a freak parade in a conservatory, Le Tamponneur de triolet crashes in with a stomping insistence that, for all its initial bravado, ends up degenerating into a trombone and electronic effects duet that pulls off a wholly charismatic simultaneity of cranky savvy, flirtatious cloying and technical wizardry.

A seriously laid-back island vibe sets in with La Nef en bateau, at which point the remarkably organic fluctuation of disparate moods that informs the work is firmly established. Without ever interrupting the piece’s rum-cocktail fluidity, lazily plucked slide guitar, wispy flute, wandering violin and smarmy shaker dominate. Chronotopie du Cancer could be a Danny Elfman score, if only he weren’t stuck in the same always-recognizable chordal modes we’ve heard in countless Tim Burton films. The palatable insanity of the mood treads the line between intention and caprice without a missed step, and in closing the first movement, the track is a flat blast — and perfect punctuation.

In the second movement, Ennio Morricone rises from the grave, albeit through the funhouse mirror that refracts the entirety of La Machine…. Banjo, guitar, major chords and fickle entropy rise to the fore in the six tracks of this middle “Paradoxe,” whose highlight is Le Coup d’archet est toujours plus vert dans la cour du voisin, a gritty and heavily effected string solo that puts any all-star fiddling on live Yanni discs straight to shame. The movement wraps with a delicate waltz that may be the disc’s most derivative two-and-a-half minutes, but remain no less lovely for their lesser challenge.

“Time” indeed “slips by” in the “Troisième paradoxe.” Short, elegant and appropriately ethereal, the movement’s five tracks (excepting a break to introduce the musicians) work like a lubricated rub-down in the wee hours after a long, happily challenging day. The closer (Oups! J’ai échappé ma boîte d’accords majeurs!) slides through varying tempos while lightly hammering a two-beat alternation that brings this mad masterwork to an ideal denouement, as if Montréal weren’t already the front-runner for the Most Steamy North American Hotbed of the New Millennium Musical Vanguard Award. Phew! Now go towel off.