Here, the evolving Swiss ensemble diatribes is a two-piece — percussionist Cyril Bondi and laptop/objects manipulator D’incise — collaborating with English composer Barry Guy on double bass. Working as an improvisational unit while recording early last year, the three engage in a sort of open-air, post-jazz deconstruction that’s often quite deranged, if sometimes quietly so.
“Le Grand Jeu Financier” starts off like a scramble of found sounds before introducing broken melodies, double bass whine, and vibrating, erratic percussion. “Le Poids des Humeurs” is just as cacophonous but more subdued, with cool percussive confusion, while a clarinettist guests on “Corrosion du Possible”, marked by the wobbles and moans of Guy’s instrument. After that, some prettiness peeks through the vaporous “Pour Les Hommes du Port”, the noisier “Ne Plus Avoir Peur des Monstres” is all friction and turbulence, “Un Peu Plus Rouge” makes for an itchy nine minutes, and the closing “Exil” settles into its own version of a groove.
Even in the vast field of improvised music today, few combinations of sound are as simultaneously anarchic and subtle as what’s heard on this bewildering album.
Doug Wallen
