Morceaux_de_machines

The end of the Napalm Jazz radio show on CKIA, in 2000 (which also led to a long hiatus for the same-named group) hasn’t discouraged the members of the group, who continued and multiplied their collaborations, internally and with increasingly more likeminded musicians. But the infernal duo of Aimé Dontigny and Érick Dorion, this hard pit always being broken up for the sake of sublime sonic pleasure, is still around: it is now known as morceaux_de_machines.T If there is hardly a radio in sight in their toolbox, one can be sure that Dontigny and Dorion have kept intact the immediate and uncompromising side of their approach from the first years. A highly skilled pair of improvisers, they know how to drive the consenting listener on a sonic adventure which will leave them with their mouth gaping. But if this dynamism and this tension seem almost theatrical to us, it’s a sort of théâtre de la cruauté we’re really talking about, impermeable to the false sentimentality of harmony, ferociously deconstructive of deifying systems such as Bach’s. Is it just noise? No, there is much more than just noise in these exuberant, life-affirming soundtracks. Just as there is more to the loudness of their composition than a superficial affront to musics which are too easy to like, or too modest. If our machinist acrobats make such a ruckus, it’s because they are acutely conscious of the risk their acrobatics entail. That said and done, we are left with a music that is lively, highly personal and full of depth.