PHILIPPE LAUZIER - A Pond In My Living Room

One could file under the so-called low fantasy the image of a pond set in the middle of a domestic living room: a bizarre yet reassuring pairing, and a metaphor as elementary as it is effective for the invention of possible worlds through art.

To sketch an artificial soundscape a single instrument is enough, perhaps aided by recording and editing techniques that are now within everyone's reach: but the decisive element remains the individual ability to modulate sound, to give it a shape akin to a dialect whose language is still partly unknown to the listener and the player alike.

Over the course of a good decade, Canadian clarinetist Philippe Lauzier has already shared the studio with many accomplished figures of the international free scene, several of whom have long been on the roster of Ingar Zach's Sofa label. Only more recently did he make his solo debut with "Transparence" (Schraum, 2013), a dress rehearsal of the acoustic textures unfolded across this new, fascinating album.

The opening track serves as a manifesto of Lauzier's quiet approach, as he patiently layers the sustained tones of the clarinet: the topography of a wholly imagined landscape, one that does not so much seek the synaesthetic reference to water (though it brushes against it) as perhaps his own idea of it, like a placid surface whose existence is confirmed only by the faintest ripples dotting it.

The brief exercise "Water Sprinkling" has the permeable hues of a half-sleep, a subtler and more enigmatic experiment built on tremolo and vibrato effects that also anticipates the pervasive high frequencies of the two tracks that follow. "On The Window Side" variously imitates the feedback of a hypothetical amplification, later interspersed with crackling static interference (likewise simulated). The closing sequence, with its perfect title "Napping In A Neglected Garden", follows the same blueprint but with an undulating motion in the manner of Feldman: a miniature polyphony of gentle glimmers, with pure but essentially irreconcilable tonalities, like cells that exist only in the instant before repelling one another.

"A Pond In My Living Room" is a collection of acoustic studies remarkably unified in intent yet capable of exploring a range of emotional shades, from the calm detachment of the opening to the subtle and unsettling vertigo of the second half. The skilful, almost "mimetic" use of audio track overlay does not leave us missing the immediacy of live playing, a fundamental element of the finest northern European improvisation.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

11/04/2017