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This review is part of the Musings Collection - see the index here.
Jean-Marc Foussat: Nouvelles
(Potlatch: P301)
Jean-Marc Foussat (compositions, tapes, keyboards, voice etc), F Pastorelli (voice), P Bouscaillou (bass), M Bohy (percussion), J Berrocal (trumpet), J-F Pauvros (guitar), R Turner (voice)
This is a weird one; a series of pieces created over a period of twenty-five or so years ranging from multi-tracked piano duets to electronic composition, all realised almost exclusively by the named composer. The range of sounds here is staggering, and the pieces, which fall broadly into four suites, sound radically distinctive.
There is, however, plenty of continuity here too, as one might expect from what is essentially a solo album with a few guest spots. The music is jarring but not ragged, moving from one idea to another with slow resolve. Dynamics range from near-silence (really; you have to turn the volume up to ten before you hear anything) to crushing, deafening cacophony, and the experience of listening to Foussat's music is always one of uneasy tension.
It's that tension, more than anything else, which defines Foussat's aesthetic. He likes intense sounds -- babies crying (screaming, really), grinding metal, extreme high pitches -- but he doesn't employ them for confrontational purposes. Indeed, the whole thing seems brought off with refreshing good humour and a sense of unpretentious fascination with the sounds themselves.
It's probably true that we ask something extra of music like this. If it's going to make us feel so tense, we say, it had better give something in return. Foussat's music, fortunately, does; it has above all an impeccable sense of timing. That means not only that nothing outstays its welcome (there are twenty tracks here, ranging from six seconds to nine and a half minutes) but that things change at their own pace, sometimes slow and sometimes quick but always appropriate.
A record as divese and superficially spikey as this one will always be a bit of a challenge, but Foussat sounds oddly eager to make his music as accessible as he can. He does this not by inserting or superimposing familiar elements but by organising his pieces with attention to detail and a real sense of drama. One has the feeling in these pieces of ideas being revealed as if they were on a stage. Not a relaxing listen, but then who wantsa relaxing listen anyway?