ZBIGNIEW KARKOWSKI – UNRELEASED MATERIALS (CD by Fibrr Records) *
ES LAUTEN DIE GLOCKEN (CD compilation by Exklageto)
ALEXEI BORISOV & ANTON MOBIN – TRY TO CRAWL OUT OF IT (CD by Mathka) *
DEROME & GOLDSTEIN & WIENS – 6 IMPROVISATIONS (CD by Ambiances Magnetiques)
QU4RTETSKI – DOES STRAVINSKY (CD by Ambiances Magnetiques)
ROBERT MARCEL LEPAGE – CANARD BRANCHU (CD by Ambiances Magnetiques)
ROBERT MARCEL LEPAGE – LE LAIT MATERNEL (CD by Ambiances Magnetiques)
DANIELLE PALARDY ROGER – LE CAILLOU (CD by Ambiances Magnetiques)
LE TON MITE – VERSION D’UN OUVRAGE TRADUIT (CD by Music A La Coque) *
NICK HENNIES – WORK (CD by Quake Basket Records) *
CRYSTAL MOONCONE – ESCAPE CONE LISTENING BEAM III (CD by Deep Listening)
PETER BATCHELOR – KALEIDOSCOPE (CD/DVD by Pogus) *
SECLUDED BRONTE – SECLUDED IN JERSEY CITY (CD by Pogus) *
ROBIN HAYWARD – NOUVEAU SAXHORN NOUVEAU BASSE (CD by Pogus) *
MATT WESTON – KIDNAPPING DEALS/PUT ON A GOOD FACE (7″ by 7272 Music)
DORNINGER – MEMBRANE (double 7″ by Base Records)
THE SMILING BUDDHAS – THE ALPS (CDR by Base Records) *
ROSALIND HALL – CARRIAGE OF VOICE (CDR by Avant Whatever) *
VINCENT BERGERON – IL Y A SEULEMENT DES APPARITIONS (CDR by Spectropol)
BERGER ROND – GAME OVERTIME C (CDR by Berger Rond)
ZBIGNIEW KARKOWSKI – UNRELEASED MATERIALS (CD by Fibrr Records)
In the mid to late 90s I frequently saw Zbigniew Karkowski, at concerts and at the office of Staalplaat and at one of those occasions he told me that he thought playing concerts was nice, but that perhaps the best way to get more known was to release lots of CDs, preferable one of each label in the world, maybe taking a cue from Merzbow. In those days there were some more releases than before, but maybe he lost his interest in pursuing such a thing already a little later on. The fact that Karkwoski died December last year could mean that there is more interest in releasing work from him. This CD is perhaps a start. Here we have five pieces he recorded in collaboration with others, and a homage, by Ilios. His piece, the shortest here, is a strong monolithic deep bass blast. In the five collaborative pieces (with Daniel Buess, Kasper Toeplitz, Julien Ottavi, Lars Akerlund and Sin:Ned we hear Karkowski ever-lasting love for noise (besides composing other music too) but with various shades. With Ottavi he goes for the all out blast of feedback and white noise, but even here it’s not just pure harsh noise wall music. In his piece with Daniel Beuss there is percussion to be heard, the instrument of Beuss, to which Karkowski adds electronics. In the pieces with Toeplitz (with whom he regularly collaborated as Le Depeupleur) and Sin:Ned there is a fine addition of heavily treated acoustic sources woven into the music. The softest piece here is with Lars Akerlund which is not exactly ambient of course, but just everything reduced and compressed a little bit more than elsewhere, the condensed form their music. Excellent release of a sadly missed noise king. (FdW)
Address: http://www.fibrrrecords.net
ES LAUTEN DIE GLOCKEN (CD compilation by Exklageto)
On many occasions I tell the reader about my ‘problem’ with reviewing compilations and yet they coming. No problem, I will explain again. I understand the need as a label to tell the world you have a roster of artists and as such the compilation CD (tape, vinyl) may have had a purpose, but in the digital age, you can spam your website or every e-mail address with a link to a free compilation on Bandcamp or Soundcloud. So why go to the trouble of getting a disc pressed up, ‘limited to 1000 copies only’? Here we have a new sub-division of Psych KG called Exklageto who offer a twelve-track compilation with some long pieces, and some by people I never heard of, such as Up-Tight (psych jam), Majutsu No Niwa, Marble Sheep (two times bad rock) and Tylean (dark wave), but from track four we know something. A great rocking piece by Ultra Milkmaids & Harris Pilton, noise by Michel Henritzi & Junko, Hiroshi Hasegawa and Contagious Orgasm, rhythms by Eric Lunde and Karl Bossman. At the end we find an old track by John Costello and Martin Bowes of Attrition fame that has a nice old-fashioned sequenced rhythm, and a track (new?) by Attrition to round things off, in a rather orchestral mood, quite nice. Some fine songs, some I don’t understand at all: that’s what a compilation should be like, right? (FdW)
Address: http://www.psych-kg.de
ALEXEI BORISOV & ANTON MOBIN – TRY TO CRAWL OUT OF IT (CD by Mathka)
On a number of occasions I reviewed something that involved the work of Anton Mobin, but it’s still a bit unclear who he is and what he does. I believe he is from the scene around Staalplaat and more specially Rinus van Alebeek and the current cassette posse from Berlin, even when he lives in Paris. Cassettes not only used as a carrier of sound to purchase as a retail customer, but also as an instrument. In 2009 he met with Alexei Borisov from Russia in Paris when their duos played the same night – Astma in the case of Borisov and Crash Duo in Mobin’s case. Every time Borisov is in Paris they work together on new music, sometimes involving Olga Mosova, Astma’s other half. In March 2013 Borisov and Mobin did a more formal recording in a studio in Paris, of which ‘Try To Crawl Out Of It’ is the result. Mobin takes credit for just cassettes and Borisov for electronics, voice and Dictaphone. The music is created through improvisation and then edited and mixed together, I think. There are nine pieces here, with a total playing time of forty-three minutes. I am not sure how that works in the recording process – do they stop every five or so minutes and then start a new piece? Or do they play for x amount of hours and cut the best bits as separate pieces? – But the result, and that’s what counts, works pretty well. It’s partly noise based, but it never is about playing as loud as possible for as long as possible. These two men rather apply collage techniques in their playing with sounds popping up and disappearing as easily – or so it seems – with occasional long form sustaining sounds at the bottom of it all, providing the paper and glue for these collages to stick on. It’s noise that is created with some consideration. Not just when playing it, but also when mixing these pieces together. The listener is supposed to enjoy this, and this listener surely does. An intelligent noise release, along the lines of Astma, _Sec or Jerome Noetinger: if any of these names mean anything to you, then this should not be missed. (FdW)
Address: http://www.mathka.pl
DEROME & GOLDSTEIN & WIENS – 6 IMPROVISATIONS (CD by Ambiances Magnetiques)
QU4RTETSKI – DOES STRAVINSKY (CD by Ambiances Magnetiques)
ROBERT MARCEL LEPAGE – CANARD BRANCHU (CD by Ambiances Magnetiques)
ROBERT MARCEL LEPAGE – LE LAIT MATERNEL (CD by Ambiances Magnetiques)
DANIELLE PALARDY ROGER – LE CAILLOU (CD by Ambiances Magnetiques)
A new bunch of CDs from Ambiances Magnetiques. From Goldstein and Wiens we know earlier releases as a trio with Ganesh Anandan and John Heward. This time Jean Derome is their partner. As a trio however they have already performed for a longer time. On april 12th, 2013 they recorded this crystal clear recording in the studio. Goldstein playing violin, Wiens mainly prepared electric guitar plus kalimba, and Derome alto sax, flute and objects. Intense and concentrated improvisations with lots of colour and sounds. Fine interplay and interaction between these reputed players, with some breath-taking moments. Like Derome, Robert Marcel Lepage is one of the founding members of Ambiances Magnétiques. He didn’t release many albums in the last few years if I’m right, but now he strikes back with two releases. He presents the more light-hearted and accessible part of the Montréal musical spectrum. ‘Le lait maternel’ contains 18 compositions Lepage wrote between 2003 and 2010 for film. It has some very catchy tunes like the jumpy ‘Le Rock du Bungalow’ that evokes orchestral film music from the 60s. Good time music! Very friendly music, tapping from a diversity of styles and idioms. Pieces on ‘Canard Branchu’ leave some more room for improvisation, but in essence this is also an album of melodious and harmonious music, typical for the Ambiances scene since the 80s. Again performed for a big ensemble of 9 musicians. So both albums offer a bunch of well-defined tunes, dressed up in fine arrangements giving voice to many different instruments and sounds. They may not surprise you, but will sure entertain you. With the new release by Palardy we turn again to a more serious face of this scene. Again we are dealing with one of the early member of the Ambiances scene. Self-taught Danielle Palardy Roger made her mark since the early 80s with groups like Justine, Wondeur Brass and Les Poules. In the last few years – since about 1998 – she concentrates on writing for Ensemble SuperMusique, an ensemble that was founded by her. Compared with earlier projects by her, this one is most close to composed new music and deals with the play between improvisation and composition. ‘Le Caillou’ is one of her oldest and most played works for this ensemble. It “is a simple game piece in which the players pass the musical development of the piece to each other while building up a slow crescendo; another set of instructions tells the musicians to trace back their steps and play as exactly as possible what they did play the first time around”, Roger explains. The one that surprised me most this time is Quartetski doing Stravinsky. Quartetski is a project founded by Pierre-Yves Martel in 2007, focused on reinterpreting works of classical composers in an improvised setting. They reworked compositions by Prokofiev, Purcell, Satie, Ellington, Cage, a.o. Because of the 100th anniversary of Stravinsky´s Rite of Spring they decided to chose this work. Besides Pierre-Yves Martel (viola da gamba, objects), we hear Isaiah Ceccarelli (drums), Bernard Falaise (electric guitar), Philippe Lauzier (bass clarinet, soprano sax) and Joshua Zubot (violin). Marvellous job in transposing this orchestral work for small ensemble. Marcel started from Stravinsky’s two-piano version of this composition. His re-working leaves the original work in tact concerning spirit, energy and drive that is in the original piece. Adding room for improvisation. Chapeau! (DM)
Address: http://www.actuellecd.com
LE TON MITE – VERSION D’UN OUVRAGE TRADUIT (CD by Music A La Coque)
This started off with me being somewhat confused. On the shrink-wrap someone wrote: Hello Frans, hope you like this soft tones’ and quickly glancing at the short info, I see something about ‘elegantly orchestrated pop compositions and jingles’. But there is more. Behind Le Ton Mite there is one McCloud Zicmuse from Olympia (WA), who now lives in Brussels (Belgium) and who has worked with groups as Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Microphones and Tenniscoasts, and he plays the bassoon on records by Mt Eerie, Chris Cohen, Felicia Atkinson, Club Des Chats, Congotronics vs Rockers, so perhaps someone who is interesting for the Vital crowd anyway. This is a twenty-six-track album (six more than on the vinyl) lasting forty-seven minutes, the shortest being twenty-five seconds and the longest almost five minutes, but in general they are around two minutes. He plays with a band with himself on guitar, voice and keyboard and others on cello, percussion, guitar, alto clarinet and keyboards. I must say I actually enjoyed what I heard, but I am not sure if I would be the right person to write something about it. I am not sure if I would consider myself qualified to do so. This indeed has something orchestral, even in such a small setting. It’s also pop/folk like, but at the same time with that orchestral, classical feel to it. The only easy thing – in my book – to compare this with is the music of Gastr Del Sol. Because it’s sung in French, the aspect of the French chanson is something that is hard to avoid (and that’s – again for me personally – something I have to live with; normally I don’t care that much for chansons). But the unusual playing of the guitar, the structure of the songs, it all makes sense. I thought all of this made a rather wonderful release. Yes, I do like these soft tones. (FdW)
Address: http://www.musicalacoque.it
NICK HENNIES – WORK (CD by Quake Basket Records)
Percussion player Hennies belongs currently to one of my favoured minimalist composers. His pieces are deceivingly simple and highly hypnotic. So far, I think, the pieces I heard from him where solo pieces, for such instruments as snare drum and vibraphone, but here we have two pieces, one for solo instrument and one for small ensemble. In the solo piece ‘Settle’ Hennies has a multi-track recording of him playing the vibraphone in his ‘usual’ style. Stead fast with overtones ringing through. Maybe there is some sort of post-production in this music? Like out of phase placing of the various layers? Maybe, but I doubt that. It sounds more like an exercise in controlling the instrument and various ways to play the same thing over and over. Over the course of the ten pieces the piece gradually dies out, and reaches no particular place in nowhere land.
The small ensemble piece is called ‘Expenditures’ and is for percussion, sine waves, clarinet, contrabass, vibraphone, trombone and violin, in which Hennies himself plays the vibraphone. This piece starts out, for a long time, to be a piece for vibraphone solo again, or so it seems, but the sine waves play very nicely along and gradually the piece seems to be falling apart – like in ‘Settle’, dying out – and the ensemble takes over. A very spacious piece of music then evolves – seemingly out of nowhere, seemingly going nowhere. But it keeps unfolding. One could think this was improvised rather than composed but what do I know? Maybe it’s somewhere in between? The instruments bending forever, making small gestures, plucking strings, maybe with objects and all such like. It has that jazz like feel, like that recent release by The Necks, but also electro-acoustic and modern classical. It’s perhaps not something I would expect from him, but it sounds no less great! (FdW)
Address: http://www.quakebasketrecords.com
CRYSTAL MOONCONE – ESCAPE CONE LISTENING BEAM III (CD by Deep Listening)
Crystal Mooncone is Stephen Rush, Chris Peck and Jon Moniaci. Peck is as a composer often collaborating in the context of dance and theatre. Moniaci is a composer, performer and computer programmer, with an interest in improvisation and live electro-acoustic performance. As a professor Rush teaches composition and as a composer he created several operas and pieces of chamber music. Besides he works frequently as a jazz musician and developed himself also as a singer of classical Indian music. So many knowledge, skills, experience, etc is combined in this trio and many of them are reflected in this work. As Crystal Mooncone they manifest themselves as an electro-acoustic improv outfit: Rush (piano, fender rhodes, micromoog, toys, carnatic vocals), Peck (flute, laptop, microphone, harmonica, melodica, guitar) and Moniaci (accordion, laptop).
Recorded in San Francisco in 2012, mixed in 2013 and released by the Deep Listening Institute. As said they show many sides in this gradual unfolding work. It starts with meditative piano playing, accompanied with flute after a while and undefinable sounds under the surface. It this combination of acoustical instruments and voice with electronic textures in the background that makes this one work for me. It offers a surprising depth. It is like being on a journey, enjoying many different landscapes and sound textures that are in a way interconnected. As although the album is made up of 9 tracks it feels like one continuous experience. Because of the unusual combinations – jazz, sound improvisation, Indian singing, etc., it is one an odd album as well. I played it a lot, and will continue to do so. It is a fascinating journey, which implies I can’t put a finger on it. Hope to keep it that way. (DM)
Address: http://www.deeplistening.org
PETER BATCHELOR – KALEIDOSCOPE (CD/DVD by Pogus)
SECLUDED BRONTE – SECLUDED IN JERSEY CITY (CD by Pogus)
ROBIN HAYWARD – NOUVEAU SAXHORN NOUVEAU BASSE (CD by Pogus)
Three new releases by the Pogus label and the first one is a CD and DVD by Peter Batchelor. The DVD has the original 8-channel piece of ‘Kaleidoscope’, but I don’t have the playback for such a thing, so I am stuck with the stereo version. I never heard of Batchelor, who is a composer from Birmingham, UK and who studied with Jonti Harrison and Andrew Lewis. He works ‘predominantly with fixed-media, his output ranges from two-channel ‘tape’ composition for concert diffusion to large-scale multi-channel installation work’. Playing with a prismatic toy as a kid inspired ‘Kaleidoscope’ and perhaps it’s not difficult to see that relating to the music piece. Just like light makes different colours of different intensities, so that this music move back and forth, from front to back and back, top to bottom, left to right. I can surely imagine how this sounds on an 8-channel set-up: even better than it does on a stereo version, I imagine. This is from the world of serious electronic composing, say the world of Canada’s Empreintes Digitales, but whereas works released over there are not always to my liking, I surely liked this one a lot. The gliding of tones, the processed white noise, the overall vibrancy of the pieces, the constant motion of the sounds used. This is all in the world of computerized sounds, I would think, and whatever went in to generate this sound material is something we not longer can hear. And perhaps it’s also something that one should not care about? It’s the result that matters and that result is great.
Of an entirely different nature is Secluded Bronte, a trio of brothers Jonathan and Adam Bohman and Richard Thomas. I do know the Bohman brothers but never heard of this trio before. I am not even sure they still exist, since these recordings were made in 2002 and pretty soon after that Pogus said they wanted to release it, which then took 12 years to materialize. It has five pieces of music, lasting twenty-three minutes and it was recorded in New Jersey at WFMU. At their disposal we find a cymbal, knives, forks, bells, file binders, shelf units, tomato slicer, egg slicer, screw threads, fishing line, light bulbs, bowls, rubber bands, balloons, cardboard, plastic, ceramic, metal and much more – this is just half the list of objects they use to scan with their contact microphones although there is an extra mention for tape collages by Adam Bohman. If you heard their previous work (preferable in concert, as it’s a delight to watch) then you know you are in for a fine treat of electro-acoustic music of a rather vibrant nature. Not the same kind of vibrancy as with Batchelor, but with a jumping nervous scanning of objects, and three persons moving quickly between all the stuff they have gathered. Like they don’t want to miss out playing anything they brought along for the ride. No sound effects, no electronics, just amplified daily objects. Pogus makes a connection with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, which I can see, but just all the same this is also musique concrete in the most pure form, but then all live and improvised, nothing post-produced or edited. Great CD, but perhaps too short. I would have loved some more.
Robin Hayward is a tuba player whose work we have reviewed before, usually with other people. Here he has a two long solo pieces and a shorter piece with Seth Josel on guitar. Hayward is the inventor of the microtonal tuba in 2009 which is also equipped with six valves, which he can use independently, using different speakers distributed over the performance space. It seems to be a complex system, but the cover tells it all. On CD it’s of course reduced to a stereo signal, so perhaps I need to spare the technical side of it. In the short piece with Josel, placed in the middle, we hear more notes being played than in the two long pieces – or so it seems. I wasn’t blown away by that piece, but the two long pieces, ‘Plateau Square’ and the title piece were quite nice. Both of these pieces are slow in development, with long sustaining sounds from the tuba being played majestically, sounding like a fog horn meeting a tuba meeting sine waves. In the title piece more than in the other, which seems to be more a like a regular slow tuba piece of slowly intertwining tuba sounds. The title piece is for me the best out of trio. Very fragile, almost electronic, but also organic and well, also, tuba like. With over thirty-two minutes this could have been longer, up to an hour, and be the only one on the release, as far I am concerned. But the other piece is great too and just the shorter piece is the one I didn’t dig that much. Conclusion: three great releases. (FdW)
Address: http://www.pogus.com
MATT WESTON – KIDNAPPING DEALS/PUT ON A GOOD FACE (7″ by 7272 Music)
Dolf Mulder reviewed previous releases by Matt Weston. He covers a lot of the free improvisation and free jazz but a lot of what he does I pre-listen. I have no idea why back then I gave the Matt Weston releases (see Vital Weekly 591 and 774) to him, as this 7″ – my formal introduction perhaps – sounds very much like something ‘up my alley’. Weston is an improvisation drummer, who has played with Roger Miller, Jim O’Rourke, Kevin Drumm and a whole bunch of others. Here he has two short pieces, on 45 rpm, so three minutes each, recorded live on tour in 2013. Short pieces, songs perhaps, but even at this length hardly ‘pop’ material. Weston explores percussive sounds – cymbals maybe, sheet of metal perhaps – with sticks and a bow – all played at the same time no doubt – with a fine sense of working the space in which this is sounding, taking its natural reverb as an extra cue for this music. It’s not music that works with a lot of beats, or perhaps any beats of a regular kind at all, as it owes much more to the world of electro-acoustic music with some carefully placed sounds and silence in between. Both of these pieces are rounded off pieces, and don’t sound like cut out from a larger piece, as is sometimes the case with this kind of music that is released on this format. One top class 7″! (FdW)
Address: http://www.7272music.com
DORNINGER – MEMBRANE (double 7″ by Base Records)
THE SMILING BUDDHAS – THE ALPS (CDR by Base Records)
Two releases on Austria’s Base Records. The first is by Dorninger, short for Wolfgang “Fadi” Dorninger, who has two 7″ records in one bag and some extra tracks in the download. The pieces on ‘Membrane’ are based on field recordings, using ‘old school montage, pitch shifting, time stretching, equalising and loops without the use if granular software’. I am glad that is mentioned; because I could easily believe something different, and would have perhaps all too easily have said it was all done on the computer. The field recordings are made all over the world, from the mid 80s until now. It’s hard to recognize anything from the original field recordings in here, impossible to say what is what. The old school techniques make that these sound very much like electronic music and that’s actually not bad at all. All of these pieces are well made and are concise and to the point. Like the Weston 7″ reviewed elsewhere, these pieces seem to be made for vinyl, keeping in mind the time restrictions that this format has. Vinyl and downloads together last for almost an hour, so it’s all together a fine album.
For a while I predicted the return of ‘ambient house’, once we all got tired from listening to another wave of cosmic music, but perhaps it already happened and cosmic music has received a fair dose of techno based rhythm or maybe it never really happened. Some not regret this. The Smiling Buddhas – what’s in a name – is a duo of Hun Fa-di (synths, samples, electronics, Wolfgang Dorninger again, I assume) and John Fitzpatrick (sound, electronics, guitar) and their aim is to “tell aural stories and we don’t create environmental sound-furniture glued together with synthesized sound-phantasms or musical postcards. We tell stories with sound”. Their previous albums dealt with such places as Chile, Peru and Nepal, but for ‘The Alps’ they went back to the childhood days in the Austrian Alps. This is ambient house as we used to know it. A techno inspired rhythm, big fat synthesizer washes and a bit of field recordings, which seem to be kept to a minimum however. There is also, and that’s perhaps a bit surprising, a bit of vocals, such as in ‘Thunder & Lightning Near Studlhutte’. The rhythms are quite forceful, more than on your average chill out record from twenty years ago. Less suited for the chill out room perhaps (do they still exist?), and maybe more alike to try out a dance too. The synthesizers sound, occasionally, a bit cliché like, but perhaps such are these things in the world of dance music. Eight songs within the classic forty-minute span make that this is a most enjoyable record. Very well suited for headphone listening when going round on your bicycle, or perhaps even skiing the Alps. (FdW)
Address: http://www.base.at
ROSALIND HALL – CARRIAGE OF VOICE (CDR by Avant Whatever)
Australia’s Avant Whatever brings us the usual new artists we never heard off and once again someone with a pretty radical sound. Rosalind Hall uses her voice and plays saxophone, creating her own reeds from different materials and found extensions for the saxophone’s bell – I think that’s about the extend of what we get to know about her. Here she has two pieces, recorded at The White Space and it’s some strange music. It’s hard to say, for starters, what it is that she does here. No doubt something with a saxophone and her voice, but at times it seems like she is trying sing down the saxophone – and it sounds more like a field recording of a whale singing than something else. That, plus the spatial character of these recordings make this a quite an extraordinary release. Other than a whale, one could also think of this as the carefully scraping of a chair over a floorboard recorded from quite some distance. It has a great warmth, this recording. It’s very minimal, but at the same time also very ‘live’ – every move, every breath, every bump: we can hear it all. That makes these twenty minutes quite a hallucinatory set of music. Maybe way too short actually. I wouldn’t have minded some twenty more minutes of this. This is improvised music, and of the kind that is very soft, but not as abstract as some of the players who use their instrument to sound like an object; Hall likes to sound her instruments (voice, saxophone) as spaces. Excellent release! (FdW)
Address: http://www.avantwhatever.com
VINCENT BERGERON – IL Y A SEULEMENT DES APPARITIONS (CDR by Spectropol)
BERGER ROND – GAME OVERTIME C (CDR by Berger Rond)
Two recent releases from the ever-busy Canadian artist Vincent Bergeron. His self-released records usually carry Berger Rond as his name, but Vincent Bergeron is his real name. ‘Il ya a seulement des apparitions’ is his second release for the Spectropol netlabel. This record has Bergeron singing in his own curious way. It is more correct to say it is somewhere between singing and speaking. Can’t say he has a beautiful voice, but a very characteristic one. From the emotional impact of his vocal performance, I guess he tells stories. As ever his music is made up of sampled ingredients that are woven into distinct and characteristic musical wholes, as we know them from Bergeron. He isolates musical passages from already existing music and builds new music from it. Often he takes his samples from classical music but also from ethnic music. To call it collage or pastiche is doing no justice. For sure this very composed music. At the same it remains clear that the sampled music had another life in the compostions they are taken from. It is impossible to forget or not to hear this, while listening to his music. Like on most earlier recordings Bergeron makes sparse use of ‘real’ musicians. A name that appears on many of his releases is that of guitarist Frederic Szymlansky who appears on ‘Seulement’ as well as ‘Game Overtime’. And also on this release the voice of Bergeron is prominent. We also hear a choir from time to time, whereas on ‘Seulement’ (female) vocal contributions come from Karli, counterpart Bergeron’s voice. Both releases once more make clear that his music defies categorization. Instead Bergeron defines a new musical category that I don’t dare to put a label on. His music is fluid in a way and even accessible and natural. Like streaming water, but with stones being placed in the river, making the river meandering in unforeseeable ways. (DM)
Address: http://spectropol.com/ & http://bergerrond2.bandcamp.com/