La sensibilité ironique de Danielle Palardy Roger s’exprime haut et fort dans cette œuvre divisée en treize tableaux relatant l’agonie d’un homme, notamment dans les tableaux Moimoimoi / Mon amour ou Moissi moisi je vais mourir. La compositrice a écrit son oratorio pour chœur mixte, deux récitants, deux solistes et deux percussions et propose ici une version d’environ une heure, après la création publique datant de 2004. Une œuvre très achevée de la «battante» de la musique actuelle.

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.