★&records
S’enfouir
2012 release ** An excellent CD, I thought, full of sparkling pieces, strange moves and with an exciting brief character per track. Certainly moving around various musical circles. It's the 20th publication - out of 24, one for each hour of a day - p…
Ailleurs
2012 release ** The achievement of Ailleurs is that by mutating its intonation and freeing the bass from its limitations as a purely rhythmic instrument a new interface appears. The reverberating result is of an expansive formula that evocatively bui…
Ctenophora
2011 release ** This release occupies a very rarefied and odd aesthetic, evocatively pitting flurries of remote-sounding electronics against thin sinews of violin. The disc oscillates between a type of ironed-out fiddle music (all ornamentation and m…
Jane And The Magic Bananas
2012 release ** It seems to me they are using the ’no wave/no new york’ format of a slightly more pop-like character, sans any vocals of course. Nervous hectic playing on all three instruments, but occasionally leaping into a bit of a rock mode, all …
La Formule Xyz
2011 release ** No concessions made by the three brooding magicians here to variations in tempo, register, or pitch, and XYZ soon succeeds in wearing down your resistance. Succumb freely to these splendid close-knit wafers of electro-acoustic intensi…
Palétuvier (Rouge)
2010 release ** Musically, the trio succeed in conveying a true “Heart Of Darkness” soundscape with their playing, painting a dark green hell where we can feel the moss and fungus dripping down our backs, and Werner Herzog is never more than five fee…
Ellipsis
2010 release ** Ellipsis is a gorgeously and skillfully rendered set of pieces that calls for listening to over and over again. It's the 13th publication - out of 24, one for each hour of a day - produced by &records (Michel F. Côté & Fabrizio Gilard…
Pink Saliva
2010 release ** Montréal-based trio Pink Saliva produce music that’s at once intensely deep and readily accessible. Accessible because drummer Michel F Côté lays down earthy rhythmic patterns that sound beamed to the planet through a reverb-y, distan…
Ave <W>
2010 release ** Taking the form of a sumptuous and exquisite musical nightmare, Ave <w> is Tiari Kese’s first album. Recorded and produced by Michel F Côté, these enigmatic electronic compositions feature as well an array of conventional instruments …
À L'inattendu Les Dieux Livrent Passage
2010 release ** Nine pieces of some great orchestral music. Moving slowly, like gentle minimal music, which slowly, over the course of these pieces built up. It combines improvisation (although sparsely here), with minimal glissandi and small melodie…
Our Balls Are Like Dead Suns
2010 release ** Despite the name suggesting some literary influence, the music of La Part Maudite, when listened to, hits you right in the gut. Likely inspired by an essay by Georges Bataille, who wrote under the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche and …
Sainct Laurens
2009 release ** The nine pieces are relatively short and in a strange sort of way quite noisy. Strange because the bigger part the music is acoustically made, but with that bit of amplification that makes all the scraping sounds wandering off every n…
La Notte Fa
2008 release ** Drums & laptop. Then add a third ingredient to the first two: multiple samples. In La notte fa, Côté and A_dontigny have laid down sculptural music on a groove. Contribution by Bernard Falaise, Alexander MacSween, Jean René and Alexan…
63 Apparitions
2004 release ** Everything sounds remarkably organic, blending the electronic and the acoustic into a fluid whole. As I walked around Yonkers, NY's Untermyer Park today, a space I've known intimately for the past fifteen years, I listened to the snat…
Des Gestes Défaits
2004 release ** Circular remixing, deconstructed concerts. Here, Bernard Falaise is the recomposer, abandoning his guitar in the service of Martin Tétreault's material. Eleven pieces of three minutes each make up this body of music, reconstituted fro…
Unstable friends
2003 release ** Lunatic songs, taxidermal music. A universe of pop, at once hard, alien and poetic, unstable friends was built on the successive contributions of each member of the trio. An exquisite corpse in the open air, the music of bob is built …