Bruire

With L’âme de l’objet, percussionist Michel F Côté reached his artistic maturity, delivering his best achievement, at least with his project Bruire. For this third album, Bruire has really become a band, as the same group of musicians appear on every track: Jean Derome (sax, small instruments, flutes), Claude Fradette (guitars), Serge Boisvert (trumpet), Martin Tétreault (turntables) and Côté (drums, live electronics). Another change is the fact that the musical approach is now rooted in jazz instead of rock. Improvisation is now fully integrated to the writing. The music on L’âme de l’objet is strongly fed by Côté’s work for theater and dance performances, as it bears a remarkable plastic quality. One can feel the movement. All pieces (initially written by individual members and worked out by the whole band) are very atmospheric and often fitting a strange avant-gardist film noir mood, thanks mostly to the trumpet plus saxophone arrangements and Martin Tétreault’s remarkable performance (and highly original choice of LPs). Highlights include Les deux mégots (“The Two Cigarette Butts”) which opens the album with an excerpt from a “book-on-LP” version of Émile Zola’s sombre novel - L’Assommoir, Jean Derome’s slow-paced new-jazz number Prières (“Prayers”) and Joane Hétu’s Papillons de nuit, of which a version with vocals appears on her album Castor et Compagnie. The set of tray cards serving as a booklet also deserves mention for its artistic quality.