Blogue

26 novembre 2011
Par Ed Pinsent in The Sound Projector (RU), 26 novembre 2011

Texte

«There is some very original noise-making going down here, and the combo work exceptionally well together, almost like a looser version of, say, Chris Burn’s Ensemble from the 1990s. Good work, one to investigate.»

Splice are a four-piece of improvising players featuring the London trumpeter Alex Bonney, the French-born sax player Robin Fincker, the electro-acoustic composer Pierre Alexandre Tremblay from Canada, plus the drummer Dave Smith. The common ground they share is Huddersfield University, where this was recorded, and the Loop Collective of which they are a part. On Lab (Loop Records Loop 1013), they concoct some fascinating episodes of rich and full music that tends to refuse easy categorisation; despite the mix of traditional instruments with live electronics, I’m pleased to see they can’t be labelled as “EAI” very easily. The opener Caffeinated Drinks is slow, droney, almost trance-like in the way it pulls you towards the calm centre of its strange resonating mixed chord, but then its follow-up Cortege allows the bass guitar (Tremblay) and drummer to cook up a slow rhythm that’s not too far apart from stoner rock, something that sounds distinctly odd when mixed with the melancholic romantic toplines of the brass section. Some of the following pieces are just about identifiable as “jazz”, albeit a very skeletal and elliptical and highly stylised form of post-everything bebop, and on other occasions the very full sound of the wind instruments makes for a slightly cloying effect; but these are captious remarks. There is some very original noise-making going down here, and the combo work exceptionally well together, almost like a looser version of, say, Chris Burn’s Ensemble from the 1990s. Good work, one to investigate.

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