Although best known as the author of navels which recreated and reshuffled the standard narrative form (eg, Life A User’s Mantlal and A Void, the latter novel written without the letter e), it could be argued that Georges Perec’s most personal and pla~yful work centred on bst-making. He exulted in cataloguing the most trivial and quotidian of details; a list of all the food eaten in one year, or 12 ways to arrange books or, most importantly for Jean Derome, his memories of jazz musicians and popular music. This is the source-point for a series of superbly executed pastiches of the musical styles and musicians mentioned and, very properly, each track title comes with a bst detailing the dedicatee, the source of the pastiche, salient facts, and the relevant text. An evocation of Sidney Bechet is particularly accurate and beguiling. Galop viennois’ is a very amusing track which begins with a simple piano passage which the pianist has great difficulty resolving before it moves to brass section, village marching band, and finally whistling accompanied by mouth harp. The CD also includes the meeting of a Derome-led sextet with the Belgian group White Wine Dark Grapes for a series of 17 game-structured pieces.
