THE SOMMES ENSEMBLE “Heel Flipper” C48 (Small Scale Music)

The Sommes Ensemble toured Europe in 2015 and 2016. Wanna know how I know that? “Heel Flipper” is the result, a document of the “strategic, organized chaos” the quartet blazed through the clubs they visited. Featuring alto sax, guitar, bass, and drums, the ensemble is an unsightly smear of fusion and free jazz and free-form freakouts, a perfect signing for Montreal’s Small Scale Music, a purveyor of the strange and the challenging. Whether the Sommes Ensemble is blasting out shards of anti-jazz or stirring a sonic cauldron of audio witches’ brew with the deepest restraint (we are on the cusp of Halloween as I write, after all), the result is never less than captivating. Or visceral. Definitely visceral, what with all the shredding and slashing and other instrumental violence wreaked upon (probably very willing and totally primed) audiences. You can hear the musicians’ skin lacerating and the blood pouring as they play, such is the intensity of performance. The unholy bacchanal of arterial spray surely whipped their audiences into frenzies so uninhibited that old Freddy Krueger himself would blush if he heard it (and if he had facial skin). But what makes “Heel Flipper” much more than just a live document is the inventiveness and the singular in-the-moment clicking of personalities. The energy is beyond palpable – it’s mesmerizing, and it penetrates you like old Freddy Krueger’s knife hand, scrambling your equilibrium as if it were opening an irreparable chest would. But of course everybody left the Sommes sessions unscathed, and probably more than a little keyed up. But mostly happy, at least until their next brush with violent death at the hands of a fictional monster… Or their next Sommes Ensemble show. Boo! Halloween…

Small Scale Music

--Ryan Masteller

LA FORÊT ROUGE “Hygiénique et noble” C37 (Small Scale Music)

Go ahead, La Forêt Rouge, you Montrealers just sit up there beyond our northern border and hock metaphorical loogies of scorn in our direction, us Americaners. I mean, Hygenic and Noble? Really? That’s what Hygiénique et noble means, and don’t think I don’t get the reference to our healthcare situation down yonder. Yes, it would be nice to have healthcare for all, and sure, it would be just swell if our women and poor, you know, probably the people who need it most, could get some semblance of affordable health insurance, but you know what today is? Today is the Bud Light afterparty (or not, actually) of our “government” at work, where we the people are stripped of human rights and sentenced to an existence based on hopes and dreams – as in, hope I don’t get sick, and, I dream of a time when that bike accident didn’t happen because I can’t afford to have my leg fixed and I’m a bike messenger, oh noes…

Motherfucking IRONY!

Or, maybe, you’re here to take our mind off of the hilarious and hilariously awful House of 1000 Corpses torture chamber our lives here have become, and banishing Dr. Satan is your foremost mission with your music and your positive outlook. Isn’t it true that a spirit of holy improvisation summons benevolent spirits? I think I read that somewhere, maybe a comic book. But still, it’s a good thing your music has all the healing capabilities that a Johns Hopkins–educated physician does – and for only six measly dollars! Hygiénique et noble is essentially the vanguard of Canadian fusion, at times frizzing itself out into Sonny Sharrock territory, but mostly puttering around the old workshop intent on discovering every sonic nook and cranny that the four-piece can infiltrate with their imaginations. Live improvisation doesn’t always sound this adventurous, but when it does, it often comes from La Forêt Rouge. Oh, didn’t you know? I reviewed them once before, gave ’em an ol’ positive reaction right here in these hallowed electronic pages. Doing it again here. Well, except for calling them out for their smug Canadian-ness. Which, come to think of it, is all America ever does, so, … we deserve it? But not this leadership. Fuck us.

And then I think of the people of the Global South… Oh boy. Perspective. Jesus.

La Forêt Rouge

Cuchabata Records

--Ryan Masteller

PHILIPPE LAUZIER “DÔME” C34 (Small Scale Music)

I’m a sucker for musicians who create their own instruments, those who perhaps consider Harry Partch the patron saint of experimental composition. Montreal’s Philippe Lauzier is one of them, and yes, I’m therefore a sucker for the recording of his installation work, entitled DÔME. But first, the exciting news – Lauzier performs upon a contraption that he built himself “made of bells, zithers, motors and a Korg synthesizer.” The erstwhile saxophonist and clarinetist may have stepped out of his comfort zone a little bit here – you sort of have to teach yourself every new instrument, and if you’ve created that instrument, well, you have to start at the beginning and define the very parameters of that instrument’s abilities. It’s not like you can just grab a sax and read a manual and wail away like you’re in Huey Lewis and the News or something (or, uh, if you’re, like, John Coltrane). You have to discover the very sounds you’re able to conjure, and the limitations of timbre and tone you’re restricted to. But maybe DÔME, which captures a live performance at La Passe in Montreal on July 31, 2015, is a record of that discovery. Surely it’s like nothing you’ve heard before. For 34 minutes, on “Far Side” and “Far Out,” Lauzier drones in sonic mélange, the minimalist reverberations pinging about the confines of the room until they’re constant, infiltrating the space behind your eyelids and nesting there long after the tape ends. The passages are weird and otherworldly, difficult to pin down, offering glimpses into the vast possibility of musical arrangement. You have no other choice but to get caught up in it, even as it threatens to overwhelm in a wave of telephonic cacophony. It’s restrained and chaotic at once, tentative and unhinged, threatening to coalesce its identity and mass into sheer devastating resonance. DÔME is freaky and singular, a creative high point for tinkerers of the physical everywhere. I’d love to hear it with some sax accompaniment too, actually, if Lauzier is ever up for the remix treatment.

Philippe Lauzier
Small Scale Music

--Ryan Masteller

LA FORÊT ROUGE “Hors de tout doute déraisonnable (Trilogie du doute II)” C40 (Small Scale Music)

I’m as surprised as you are that I woke up this morning still breathing oxygen on planet earth, huffing down sweet gulps of fresh air while perceiving the surroundings of my bedroom. It was touch and go there for a while – I just never know when the universe is going to wink out of existence, so I try to engender a healthy sense of awe within myself at the most mundane things.

Here’s the greatest news of all, at least on a day like today, when the act of waking up is itself particularly flabbergasting: you don’t have to settle for uninteresting music! I sure am not, and instead of reaching for the go-to morning rock records (whatever your choice is, be it Sublime, Korn, Dave Matthews, or another musical artifact), I grabbed the top tape off the #CASSETTEGODS stack that’s sitting by my desk, hoping against hope to be blown into another dimension (but sort of not hoping that the tape would cause the universe to wink out – I think I’ve covered that I’m pretty terrified of that happening). Guess what I grabbed? Guess, guess! Yes, it was Three Fourths Tiger’s Indoor Voice, but I’d already reviewed that (two times, it turns out), so I put it back. No, what I really grabbed was La Forêt Rouge’s tongue-twisteringly titled (in French, too!) Hors de tout doute déraisonnable (Trilogie du doute II), a sequel to part 1 of a planned trilogy. The title means “Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt,” and there is absolutely no way anybody’s going to have any questions about anything after listening to this supermassive black hole of a cassette engulf everything in existence.

Over two songs and forty minutes, the four-piece from Montreal melds stuttering funk, krautrock, and psychedelic Brazilian influences into one bizarre and compelling whole. Imagine Can and Fela Kuti harnessing Sun Ra’s comet, and you’re close. Every second is improvised, and the players form their own magnetic field around one another, a field so powerful that it’s impossible to believe Montreal, the city, is still standing in the wake of this thing. It’s cosmic; it’s out there. It’s more powerful than we can possibly imagine. In fact, I’m willing to bet that the flickering of reality at the edge of my periphery is actually being caused by me listening to this. Uh oh.

I’m at the end of the tape, and it’s clear that we’re a fraction of a millisecond away from the universe actually collapsing in upon itself. La Forêt Rouge is to blame. I have just enough time (I’m really fast) to finish this review and hit “send” on the email to #CASSETTEGODS HQ. It’s definitely too late to warn everybody. Oh well. It might actually even be too late to finish this sentence, come to think of it, so if you’re reading this and I don’t

Small Scale Music

La Forêt Rouge

--Ryan Masteller

HMS “Prie” (Small Scale Music)

HMS are a four musician electronically infused free form experimental ensemble. “Prie” is the group’s third piece of output and is four tracks long. The initial listen of a piece of structureless improvisational music is a bit like playing Russian roulette; you either will get lucky or die and you won’t know which until you pull the trigger. As an unfortunate opposite to Russian roulette, my main gripe with “Prie” is that it was too safe. Lots of building from clearly talented musicians who never did much with it. It felt like a waste and the lack of preplanned form is what prevented them from capitalizing on creating big moments in my opinion.

With that being said, I don’t want to condemn the whole tape. Maybe they didn’t want to give me that big moment. Maybe I don’t deserve it and should focus on what I got instead. HMS have found a way to tranquilize as they improvise. This is good music to unwind to. So sit back and click the link below to stream or buy.

Stream + Buy: https://smallscalemusic.bandcamp.com/album/rie

-- Roy Blumenfeld

NIGREDO “Lunas Negras” (Small Scale Music)

“Lunas Negras”, which translates to English as “Black Moons”, is a chaotic and breathtakingly beautiful album by Canadian jazz ensemble Nigredo. Their label, Small Scale Music, is dedicated to small batch cassette releases. The music is sourced from a concert which took place in Montreal earlier in the year.

The ensemble has five core members who masterfully take care of the strings contributing to the release. A paradox is created. The strings guide the mood of each piece yet each player’s emotions are clearly guiding them as they come together to create dense soundscapes. The percussion was apparently played “by the public” and as risky as that sounds it was well executed. Vocalist Géraldine Célérier Eguiluz’s voice continues to haunt me long since I’ve turned the music off to the point where my brain begs me to put the tape back in for another listen. It’s been a while since my last community college Spanish class so I am missing out on actually understanding the lyrics. But even with the language barrier, I still can’t help but be in awe of her talent.

PLEASE give this tape a try. I typed please in all caps because I am begging you. It’s important to me that no one misses out on good music. Even though it’s impossible to consume everything worth hearing in a lifetime, when a project like this passes someone by it’s a tragedy. Prevent that from happening to you.

Stream + Buy: https://smallscalemusic.bandcamp.com/album/lunas-negras

-- Roy Blumenfeld