Lost on the Way takes its titles from Homer's Odyssey, and the French clarinettist Louis Sclavis uses Ulysses' long voyage home as the frame for twelve new pieces. The Lyon-born composer wanted to carry on the work of his previous quintet on L'imparfait des langues, recorded in 2005, and "to invent new musics to play and to lose oneself in". Released by ECM in 2009, it is one of his hardest-hitting, most rock-driven records, built on intricate and often oblique writing.
Two players stay from that earlier group: the guitarist Maxime Delpierre and the drummer François Merville, a long-time associate. They are joined by Matthieu Metzger on soprano and alto saxophones and Olivier Lété on electric bass, while Sclavis plays clarinets, bass clarinet and soprano saxophone. The quintet recorded in September 2008 at the Théâtre de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines with the engineer Gérard de Haro, and the album was mixed at Studios La Buissonne in Pernes-les-Fontaines. Manfred Eicher was executive producer. Lété wrote the short The Last Island and co-wrote La première île, and the rest is by Sclavis.
The opener, De Charybde en Scylla, sets Sclavis's bass clarinet and Metzger's soprano against a funky backbeat from Merville. Bain d'or has a pastoral cast and a bass solo from Lété over spare guitar and a hypnotic drum pattern. On Aboard Ulysses's Boat the drums push hard under snaky, distorted lines, and the brief L'absence closes the journey as an elegiac coda. The reviewer of the Free Jazz Collective preferred the duo and trio passages, where the texture opens up and the playing turns more direct.
In Jazzwise, Duncan Heining called it "one of Sclavis' most hard-edged and rock-oriented" records, and heard in Lété's bass and Merville's drums the treacherous waters Ulysses has to cross. Barry Witherden gave it five stars in BBC Music Magazine and wrote that "Sclavis's superb clarinet has a stimulating partner in Metzger's alto". Ray Comiskey of The Irish Times heard rock and free improvisation along the route, with a touch of ritual in the textures. He singled out the opener, Le sommeil des sirènes and the title track. The French monthly Jazzman made it a Choc du mois.
This is the CD edition, ECM 2098, first released on 8 May 2009. The cover photograph is by Sclavis himself.
