IIMA - International Improvised Music Archive         To  Front Page...     This review is part of the Musings Collection - see the index here.

This review first appeared in Hollow Ear magazine JACQUES TREMBLAY -- Alibi           (Diffusion i Media: IMED9842)
Jacques Tremblay (electroacoustic compositions)

Jaques Tremblay's world is a pretty frightening one. Taking his cue from traditional concerns of musique concrete, his music is cinematic, narrative-based and populated by many recopgnisable sound-sources. Take the lovely "Oaristys", which the composer rather worryingly describes as "erotic". It moves programmatically through six stages of a sexual encounter, each one populated by disturbing, disembodied sounds, cavernous echoes and intense dissonances. Maybe this just goes to show subjective any "program" will be, attached to any music, even in this most illustrative genre.

Given that "Oaristys" is Tremblay's tender ballad, no wonder tracks describing "the unconscious, prowling and searching for a way to enter the fissured wall of memory" or "the cruelties that man has committed in the name of God" are a long way from blissed-out ambiance. While the musical content of these pieces is in itself enjoyable enough, the concrete sounds (including spoken words, water, footsteps; the usual things) create a considerably more all-encompassing atmosphere of nastiness. It's as well that Tremblay puts enough musicality into what he does that you feel you want to keep listening. It's something like watching a horror movie with your eyes shut.

The last two tracks are less conceptually scary, but just as edgy. "Rictus Nocturne" is the composer's tribute to jazz, and oddly enough it's the world of mushy standards which gets the treatment. Still, apart from the odd, obvious sample, what Tremblay is doing here is using the notion of the "jam session", the informal, after-hours playing where much experimentation often goes on. Combining a variety of electronic techniques under no particular theoretical rubric, Tremblay creates a altogether abstract work of music with very little to do with jazz; though it's a lot of fun. "Jeu d'Ondes" is a short piece sampling sounds from a yacht (both the boat and the water) and completely re-frying them to produce another abstract composition.

Tremblay's relationship to his sources is ambiguous, transforming some beyond recognition while leaving others untouched. Often, as on the first and final tracks, the results are extremely dramatic; in "Oaristys" they are strangely beautiful.


Richard Cochrane