Cross-pollination doesn't just improve the health of flowers. Among creative musicians, a small group working on each other's projects, rotating the role of bandleader and creating varieties of groupings, can create an environment of understanding ideas and approaches and comfort in collaboration. That spirit of communal work - which has so benefited the AACM, Ambiances Magnetiques, musicians around the Vision Festival and so many more localized scenes - is part of the strength of the work on the French d'Atures Cordes label. Their enigmatic work only seems to benefit from shared understandings, and a common interest in dark, moody music and sparing use of spoken word (always in French) give the records an intriguing cohesiveness.
Tristate lilas is the final part of a fugitive-tale trilogy by Franck Vigroux. It's a haunting, cinematic album with deep, foreboding narration by Marc Ducret. Also known for his work with Tim Berne, Ducret's striking guitar work is heard here along with his rich oration, sometimes in displaced dialogue with singer Jenn Priddle. With the resounding double bass of Bruno Chevillon (who plays in Louis Sclavis' groups) and the floating sounds of Hélène Breschand's harp, the overall effect - at least to a non-French speaker - is oddly reminiscent of the soundtrack album for Wim Wenders' film Wings of Desire. Vigroux's own electronics and turntable work adds to the feeling of alientation, creating disturbing glitches and incongruities to the setting.
Drummer Michel Blanc fills out Vigroux's band, and Vigroux in turn shows up on Blanc's Le passage éclair. It's an equally cinematic album, although the imagined movie here is stranger - or at leas prone to mood swings - and a single track with prominent vocals adds to the vague feeling of a storyline. With Stéphane Payen on saxophone and Guillaume Ségume on double bass, the band works through off-kilter swinging numbers, dark dissonances and abstract pieces with buried voices. Blanc's drumming throughout is propulsive, carrying many of the tracks against swelling beds of sound. Vigroux is heard here on electric guitar and bass, sometimes heavily treated and often leaping out of the mix with hard-edged solos.
Breschand and Chevillon's solo albums don't directly benefit from the players' commune since they are the only players on them, but they do carry the same dramatic moodiness; neither presents what might be expected from their instruments.
Breschand uses the natural sounds of the acoustic harp in parts of Le gout de sel, playing both conventionally and with slight modification. But then she subverts the angelic beauty of the instrument with attacks from prepared strings and the sting of her electric harp. Her spoken word on a few tracks is effective in its strongly whispered delivery. She's a powerful player, moving deftly through the instrumental voices available to move between sparsely graceful passages and more of the dark corridors that seem to be a particular d'Autres Cordes love.
Chevillon's Hors-champ is even more surprising as a purportedly solo work. The dense soundscape is often unidentifiable as a bass, or any other instrument, and when it does gain ground with a richly resonant acoustic solo or fast, distorted electric run, he adeptly mutates it back into alien territory. Like Breschand, he has a good sense of thick and thin sounds, and Ante Greie-Fuchs' reading of text by Vigroux on two tracks adds to the sense of a story being told, even if much of the story is played out only in the eye of the listener's mind.
Text and translations aren't provided for any of the releases, which in one sense doesn't take away from their effectiveness. Certainly something is lost to the non-French speaker, but across these gripping recordings there's an acoustic paranoia, a nightmarish feeling of alienation that plays eerily well on the imagination.
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