CONSTELLATION RECORDS 20th January 2017
A great collection of psychedelia, made from three suites of music. Very French-Canadian, very extemporaneal, it brings together elements of Air, Can, Folktronica and The Polyphonic Spree. Staying happily in the freak-out zone, textures meld and minds melt from the outset.
Floating pop textures and harmonies accompany chiming guitar and hypnotic looped rhythm. Bits sound like a French film soundtrack from the late sixties, other times like a furiously yelping wig-out. Choral effects and shouts keep up the intensity. Elsewhere, twanging guitar, drum frenzies, psych overload. A distant voice hollers and guitars play tight figures; it’s all tight yet far-out. Things get choppier and funkier – the sort of jittery white-boy funk of Talking Heads appears. But there is also the sometimes swamp-blues of Captain Beefheart’s Floppy Boot Stomp.
This is the band’s second album and it is wonderfully free-thinking and uninhibited. Is the sun coming out of her mouth, as the band’s name suggests? Well, yes, it is. And is it “pas pire pop”? Better than that, better than “not bad”. Those bashful Canucks.
This grooves along long-form, taking its own shape, making its own fusions. There’s a traditional band here – a couple of guitars, a bass, some drums – but mixed in are electronics, found sounds and a determined leaning towards a lengthy groove-based hypnotism. Bubbling might describe the undertow here, especially on “side two” – Tourner Incessament Dans l’Eclatement Euphoric De Soi (Turn Incessantly In The Explosion Of Everyone), which is a tour de force of travel from jittery funk to Afro-beat to sweet resolution.
This needs a place in your heart.