Hubbub

Whobub is a double album by Hubbub. The French quintet is Frédéric Blondy on piano, Bertrand Denzler on tenor saxophone, Jean-Luc Guionnet on alto saxophone, Jean-Sébastien Mariage on electric guitar and Edward Perraud on percussion. On stage they look like a conventional jazz band, yet their music is built almost entirely from sustained sound. Each disc holds one concert, and each documents the slow, collective unfolding the group has worked on since 1999.

The first disc was recorded at Festival Muzzix, La Malterie, Lille, on 23 April 2010, the second at Carré Bleu in Poitiers on 12 February 2010. Writing in Point of Departure, Stuart Broomer observed that in Hubbub's hands "every technique for the typically discrete sound is regularly exchanged for a drone". Piano, cymbals and guitar are bowed, the guitar's volume knob erases the attack, and the saxophonists use circular breathing and multiphonics. At times the band resembles a vast organ chord full of small random details, always shifting even when it seems unchanged. Who is a single 43-minute piece that starts from Mariage's bare, sustained guitar notes and gathers density with a focused calm. Bub 1, the bulk of the second concert, has a long, delicate stretch of Guionnet's whispering harmonics with Perraud's light percussion and Blondy's whistling string glissandi. The short Bub 2 stays in the same attenuated atmosphere. Before this set the group had recorded Ub/Abu for For 4 Ears and Hoop Whoop and Hoib for Matchless.

Released by Matchless Recordings as MRCD 80, a double CD, with both concerts recorded in 2010.