Philippe Lauzier (saxo) et Pierre-Yves Martel (viole de gambe) comptent parmi les plus actives recrues de la décennie 2000 chez Ambiances Magnétiques. Ce premier disque en duo (chez &records, l’étiquette de Michel F. Côté) est tout bonnement sublime. Une série de pièces circonspectes, où chaque son est étudié mais coule de source. Un voyage à l’intérieur des instruments impliqués (ceux ci-haut, plus clarinette basse, tubes, mélodica, petits haut-parleurs, radios, micros contacts), mais surtout à l’intérieur d’une relation musicale profonde entre les deux protagonistes. On sent clairement que ces deux-là ont fait et continuent de faire des découvertes ensemble. Une écoute exigeante mais un très beau disque.

Ouf, un disque joyeusement sale, une collaboration entre le batteur-bruiteur Michel F. Côté et l’artiste échantillonneur a_dontigny (Aimé Dontigny de morceaux_de_machines). Explosions de batterie, pièces aux rythmiques claudicantes, dénaturation de citations sonores impromptues, jeux irrévérencieux. C’est entraînant, intriguant, ça se voudrait peut-être repoussant mais ça ne l’est pas du tout. Beau travail sonore, belle énergie, beau sens de garoché mesuré. Bravo! Et tout à fait dans la continuité des derniers projets sur disque de Côté, soit (juste) Claudette et le duo Vulgarités avec Isaiah Ceccarelli.

Released a few months prior to Across the Sky (Plunge, 2009) and, despite the two releases really representing one multifaceted debut, Geggie Project is the official first release as a leader from John Geggie, a bassist deserving far greater recognition. Geggie Project finds the Ottawa, Canada-based bassist, Toronto-based drummer Nick Fraser, and inestimable free improvising pianist Marilyn Crispell entering the realm of music as conversation. Given her more recent inward-looking proclivities, it wouldn’t be a huge leap to compare Geggie Project with recent Crispell trio recordings like Storyteller (ECM, 2004), but doing so only completes half the picture.

There’s no denying that Geggie Project leans towards a similar gentle introspection. Certainly Geggie’s seven compositions—comprising half the program and balanced with a series of collective trio improvisations—possess similar markers. The lovely I Wanted More is a rubato tone poem rivaled only by Across the Sky, performed with an understated sense of dramatic tension, with Geggie and Crispell in spontaneous counterpoint and Fraser creating delicate swatches of color.

Geggie’s playing has undergone some remarkable evolutionary leaps over the past couple of years—something clear those who have followed his annual Geggie Concert Series The National Arts Centre Fourth Stage—making it, perhaps, a good things that the bassist waited this long to record his debut as a leader. His confident pizzicato opens the record on Credo; when Fraser and Crispell do enter, the pianist responding to Geggie’s increasingly persistent lines with spare, dark lines and equally impressionistic voicings, the coalescence into form is soft but unmistakably visceral. The group takes just as much time finding its way to Run-Away Sheep‘s quirky form and barely predictable stops-and-starts, while on Or Not, the trio comes as close to swinging as it ever does on the disc; rather than its pulse being firmly defined by any one player, however, it’s built by all—lose one player and the entire forward motion would fall apart like a house of cards.

The seven improvisations peppered throughout the disc are as revelatory as Geggie’s writing—and what really takes this trio away from the ECM aesthetic. Far more angular, and with a drier sound that’s more direct, brief improvs like Ice and Meltwater and Weather Forecast skitter around with a purpose, while the more lyrical Réconfort and starker Entre chien et loup are the dictionary definition of the term “spontaneous composition.” But it’s the closing Bouclier canadien that proves this trio’s truest mettle, with Crispell’s jagged chords, Fraser’s Tony Oxley-informed controlled chaos, and Geggie’s harmonic-driven arco building, over the course of five minutes, a gradually intensifying crescendo of unexpected power and even rarer patience.

When a debut’s as good as Geggie Project it’s worth the wait. When it’s coupled with Across the Sky, it’s a powerful one-two punch that finally rights a major wrong, by providing some much-needed and well-deserved exposure for an artist who has remained a well-kept local secret for far too long.

No doubt this label is in a lucky situation: the only mail arriving today where these two CDs, which included the 2008 release by Michel F Côté and a_dontigny, which is well beyond the six months that I usually have for accepting promo’s. This to avoid labels sending me complete back catalogues, and not because of being lazy. We know Et Records as a label from Canada with improvised music, but these two stretch the idea thereof. a_dontigny we know as someone from the No Type Records label with some highly charged musique concrete cut up music, whereas Michel F Côté is a known as an improviser on drums. That’s what he is playing here too, along with percussion, micros, tapes and electronics, and a_dontigny gets credit for cut-ups, drum machines and dsp. A bunch of (un-)invited guests also appear: Bernard Falaise, Alexandre St-Onge, Alexander MacSween and Jean René. I am not entirely sure how this was conceived, but I think this is the result of recording together some long night on drums and electronics, and then taking the recordings to the computer to effectively and extending mixing, chopping up, editing to create some wicked, crazy music. Hardly to be recognized as improvised music as such, this owes much more electronic music on one side and free rock on the other. Say Moha! or Rock Out but then a bit softer, a bit more structured and perhaps more electronic in their approach. Its however not an album that we can apply such words as ‘careful’ or ‘gentle’, as the music is a bit too mean for that. A high energy trip all around. Each track is in full speed mode, with tons of small sounds happening all around. One that doesn’t leave you untouched. One crazy fucked up form of improvised music.

The second release is by Philippe Lauzier on saxophones, bass clarinet, tubes and melodica together with Pierre-Yves Martel on prepared viola da gamba, two inch speakers, radios and contact mics. I assume, seeing this was recorded over a two day period, that this is a studio recording, which was later mixed by the two musicians, along with Dave Bignell. Improvised music of course, but quite an odd one. The nine pieces are relatively short and in a strange sort of way quite noisy. Strange because the bigger part the music is acoustically made, but with that bit of amplification that makes all the scraping sounds wandering off every now and then in the realms of feedback like sustained sounds, this is certainly not an easy work to access. Its however one, I think, that is quite beautiful. The sustaining sounds produced by what seem to be the main instruments (saxophone and viola) are already quite nasty, but in addition to whatever they are doing, this is a great work, totally demanding full concentration of the listener, but also totally rewarding. Excellent discs, both of them.

We keep telling you: we don’t make the news. We just run it through Babelfish. Fatti maschi, parole femmine. All this is to say that La Notte Fa is a beguiling 2008 release, courtesy A_dontigny and Michel F Côté. The former is Aimé Dontigny of Napalm Jazz, and the latter, the gentleman pictured just left. […] This is tinkery and inspired brain food, light on its feet, somewhere between sherry and chablis. […]

Pierre Labbé first appeared in the catalogue of Ambiances Magnétiques in 1999 on two releases. On one as a member of Les Projectionnistes, on the other as part of Papa Boa, a quartet of Bernard Falaise, Rémi Leclerc (Miriodor) and Frédéric Roverselli. In 2003 he returned with his Ensemble Pierre Labbé for his first real musical statement: Risque et pendule. A sextet interprets nine stylistic diverse compositions by Labbé, again with guitarist Falaise as one of its members. Now we are once more six years ahead in time. This time Labbé (tenor sax, flute) formed a quartet to perform his newest compositions: Bernard Falaise (guitars), Clinton Ryder (bass) and Isaiah Ceccarelli (drums, percussions). This release perfectly fits in the long tradition of Ambiances Magnétiques of combining rock and jazz elements in the format of avant rock-like groups. Discussions whether it is more rock or jazz in the end or fruitless. Both languages are interwoven in a very organic way by Labbé, implying that is meaningless to seek for the moments where rocks ends and jazz starts. This atypical music that integrates so many different musical aspects and traditions, is on the other hand very together and undivided. This has to do with the strong handwriting of Labbé as a composer, and the dedicated performance by the group. The music ranges from almost spiritual pieces like the opening track Pour le Moment to very rhythmic complex exercises as Manivelle. Matos belongs also to this last category. But this piece is at the same time an example of how Labbé reserved space for free collective improvisation. In many of the pieces there is much room for guitarist Falaise, for his surprising and inspired playing. No surprise Falaise is asked and involved in many initiatives nowadays. Hope it will not take another six year for a new album by Labbé and his mates.