Qui a vu ce Mystère…

Improvising Beings - IB 54- 2016

 



Augustin Brousseloux guitare électrique

Jean-Marc Foussat synthi AKS & voix

Quentin Rollet saxophones alto & sopranino

 

 

 


 




 

 

 

 

 

Guy Sitruk - 02 décembre 2016

Rollet, Foussat, Brousseloux "Qui a vu ce mystère" (Improvising Beings)

cd back

 

1 : inversement chose

Des sons à peine audibles, puis progressivement émerge une pâte sonore, granuleuse, aux lacérations métalliques, comme une masse magmatique qui avance, inexorable et sombre, entraînant de gros débris industriels, puis une forme de chant indistinct.
Le saxophone enfin, avec d'étranges sons comme une machine qui lâcherait brutalement sa vapeur, par à coups. Un souffle des profondeurs qui laisse échapper quelques scories. La fascination est installée, prégnante. Des éclats aux sax, des roulements, des plaintes, un discours tourmenté enserré dans cette masse sonore sombre qui avance, inéluctablement, et des sons graves, une guitare, industrielle et poétique, à la puissance onirique peu commune.
Puis cette masse se fait plus légère, des lignes de guitares répétitives, vaguement espagnoles ou presque bluesy, nostalgiques. Rien n'est installé, tout se transforme. Une voix déformée tient un discours inaudible. Des paysages émergent, se fondent, complexes et séducteurs, captivant les oreilles, propulsant l'imaginaire, pinçant le bout du cœur .
Vers la fin de la pièce, un solo étourdissant d'Augustin Brousseloux, entrelacé de nappes au synthétiseur, de chants étranglés au sax ... les espaces industriels se déploient puis tout se tait, sur une note de guitare, seule.


2 : fugitif irrationnel

Cela débute comme un chant au sax sur des notes répétitives à la guitare. Ce chant s'exaspère, s'éraille, se brouille, s'égosille, perd toute raison, plonge dans les profondeurs du souffle pour tournoyer ensuite dans les aigus, des nappes aux pulsations répétitives formant écrin. Un Quentin Rollet superlatif, impressionnant de maîtrise, d'imagination. Et toujours ces magmas sonores complexes, instables, à la respiration régulière, terreau de nouvelles efflorescences à la guitare, de nouvelles virevoltes au sax. Une sombre beauté élaborée dans les secrets alambics de Jean-Marc Foussat.


Cet assemblage de talents produit des univers sonores insoupçonnables, d'une puissance onirique assez rare. Un album remarquable !

Prendre son temps et finir bluffé chez Improvising Beings

Dan Sorrells

  1. Joëlle Léandre & Théo Ceccaldi - Elastic (Cipsela)
    This was the year of Léandre: our weeklong celebration seems hardly enough. There are a number of albums that could have gone here: the tentet on Ayler, the 8CD set on Not Two, the historic performance on Fou, and on and on. Her turn here with Ceccaldi is simply gorgeous music.

  2. Augustin Brousseloux, Jean-Marc Foussat, Quentin Rollet - Qui A Vu Ce Mystère… (Improvising Beings)
    There were also a number of notable Foussat releases this year, but this one with the (extremely!) young Brousseloux is a knock-out.

  3. Judson Trio (Joëlle Léandre, Mat Maneri, Gerald Cleaver) - An Air of Unreality (RogueArt)
    Two Léandre albums in the top three may seem excessive, but that's the kind of year she had. Maneri and Cleaver are also at the height of their powers.

  4. Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio - Desire and Freedom (NotTwo)
    Three long, glorious, lyrical cuts from Amado and his superb trio with Miguel Mira and Gabriel Ferrandini.

  5. Battle Trance - Blade of Love (NNA Tapes)
    Even more intense, intimate, spirited, melodic, ambitious, and virtuosic than Palace of Wind. If you can believe it.

  6. Lotto - Elite Feline (Instant Classic)
    The trio of ?ukasz Rychlicki, Mike Majkowski, and Pawe? Szpura conjure stunning, trace-inducing atmospheres out of bare-bones material.

  7. Eve Risser White Desert Orchestra - Les Deux Versants Se Regardent (Clean Feed)
    A hugely ambitious offering from Risser that showcases the many talents in her orchestra. A late year release that might have climbed even higher had there been more time to absorb it.

  8. Julien Desprez, Benjamin Duboc, Julien Loutelier - Tournesol (Dark Tree)
    Duboc has long been a favorite, and the two Juliens were new to me. This short album doesn't give up its secrets easily--every time I listen, it seems to be completely different from the times before.

  9. Aly Keïta, Jan Galega Brönnimann, Lucas Niggli - Kalo - Yele (Intakt)
    Infectious music. An ode to rhythm.

  10. Bushman's Revenge - Jazz, Fritt Etter Hukommelsen (Rune Grammofon)
    Admittedly, I've never been a big Bushman's Revenge fan, but this album is superlative. Some of the best "jazz" guitar I've heard in years.

Monday, January 16, 2017

Augustin Brousseloux, Jean-Marc Foussat, Quentin Rollet, Qui A Vu Ce Mystère. . .

What is a soundscape? Like a landscape, it is something with a horizontal continuity, an expanse of music land and sky if you will, a series of event markings that draw out the particularities of that landscape, along with the continuity of horizontal sustains. More or less. The world of free jazz-new music has embraced soundscaping increasingly, it seems to me, over the last decades.

Qui a Vu Ce Mystère. . . (Improvising Beings ib54) is such  a soundscape and a good one it is. The music is crafted freely but with care and sensitivity by a threesome of Augustin Brousseloux on electric guitar, Jean-Marc Foussat on live electronics, and Quentin Rollet on alto sax.

Each falls into his specific role and there is a good deal of dramatics and space-time cosmetics to be heard in the 40-minute live number and the 20-minute studio follow-up.

It is all about creating a vibrant and vital collective sonance than it is not so much about impressing a stamp of individual personalities times three, although each musician does have a personal musical fingerprint that we find all over the music.

But in the end it is about the unique scapeside aural view that is created over time, in this case two contrasting ones.

It is the sort of music Improvising Beings has had the nerve to put out over the past few years. It is an example of how the formulas of freedom and what is orthodoxy in free-new music is not necessarily the only way to go. 

This music transfixes if you listen closely and repeatedly. It is unfashionably electric, which means it is beyond fashion, or rather the fashion-of-fashion-rejection.

It takes some living with over time. And then, ideally, you get it.

Does this have anything to do with "Ascension" or "Hymnen"? Yes, undoubtedly there are roots there, but it furthers avant "traditions" in a disarming, non-traditional way.

I like that. Years from now, this music will either be entirely forgotten or considered an important new path. That in part is up to us, the community of listeners. Which is it?

Listen for yourself.

But listen.