★Les Disques Victo
Envoi
*2022 stock* 'American trumpeter Bill Dixon began composing his moody, darkly abstract music in the mid-60s, fusing free jazz with modernist chamber music elements touching on Stravinsky and Schoenberg. Envoi is the last of these works, recorded at the FIMAV festival in Victoriaville just three weeks prior to Dixon’s death in June 2010. Dixon’s failing health required that his unaccompanied trumpet solo with echoing multiplex be played on tape during the concert, but nothing feels unfulfilled or…
Birds Abide
*2022 stock* Recorded at the 26th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, May 22, 2010. “This set was my favorite one of the entire Festival. It was most magical and flowed organically. For me, this was the perfect trio, with Malcolm on the high end, Barre on the low end and Catherine somewhere in the middle with her immensely charming voice & presence. I kept thinking that this trio is perfect, communicating on a high level and taking us with them on an inner journey that o…
Eviyan Live
*2022 stock* 3 unique composer/performers merging into a singular sound, an intimate, acoustic blend of world roots, post-minimalism, jazz, rock, and cabaret.
Echo Echo Mirror House
*2022 stock* Live recording of Anthony Braxton's Echo Echo Mirror House Music, where all the musicians use iPods in addition to their instruments, which took place during 2011 Tri-Centric Festival at Roulette.
In Echo Echo Mirror House musical system, all the musicians wield iPods in addition to their instruments, while navigating scores that combine cartography and evocative graphic notation, creating a musical tapestry combining live performance and sampled sounds from Braxton’s extensive reco…
Victoriaville Mai 2011
*2022 stock* A collaboration of the legendary Richard Pinhas (of Heldon fame) and Japanese noise artist Merzbow would be worthy of note. Add in Wolf Eyes, the trio of Mike Connelly, John Olson, and Nathan Young, and you have the potential for a truly chaotic sonic assault. But that doesn’t happen. Instead, this quintet provides a symphonic soundscape that maintains a slow boil.
Recorded live at FIMAV 2011, the release consists of a 48-minute performance, followed by a 9-minute encore. Unlike som…
Solo + Trio Roma
*2022 stock* "The rhythm section is thunderous in general with Nilssen-Love providing polyrhythmic barrage fire to Brötzmann’s assaults. It is a vortex of sounds – some shrieking, others almost torn, spat, even puked – owing credits both to hardcore and to Dadaistic sound poems, sharing their free rhythms, their devoted declamation and their rejection of conventional form and content. Trio Roma is a supremely passionate and committed group." -Martin Schray, Free Jazz Blog
The Victoriaville Tape
'Both bassists had made regular appearances in Victo over the past two decades, but no one in the audience could have guessed that it would be Kowald's last. The German improviser died in New York City four months later. The French-Canadian radio was not recording this concert, but the mixing desk engineer kept a tape rolling, just in case, and negotiations toward the release of this performance were already in progress when fate struck. There is magic on this record, especially in the last minu…
Withdrawe, This Sable Disclosure Ere Devot'd
'If you are a Fushitsusha or Keiji Haino fan, you already know to just forget what the title of this CD means -- you are never going to know unless you have a lot of familiarity with the early decades of the English language. If you aren't a fan, then who cares anyway? This Fushitsusha date was recorded live at the Victoriaville Festival in Quebec in 1997. Guitarist Haino and longtime bassist Yasushi Ozawa broke in then-new drummer Ikuro Takahashi. The set is just over an hour long and is broken…
Cecil Taylor / Bill Dixon / Tony Oxley
'As evidenced by this release of the set, the music played that night was intimate, even delicate. It still seems that Dixon didn't quite sit down at the table with his mates, and his electronic effects don't do him any favors, but credit seems due to him for keeping the set at an unusual slow burn. There aren't the displays of pyrotechnics evidenced in Taylor and Oxley's duo performances. Instead, piano and drums dance lightly around the trumpet's background wash, creating a music both sparse a…
Sextet (Victoriaville) 2005
'Simply put, this is a stunning piece of work, performed in front of a stunned audience that was won over from the first few notes. After a spell of a few years, Anthony Braxton was back in Victoriaville in 2005 to present a new line-up. This sextet of young musicians (except for tuba player Jay Rozen, who is more experienced) is impressive to say the least. Taylor Ho Bynum makes a flashy trumpeter, quickly rising to the status of Toshinori Kondo. Violinist Jessica Pavone waltzes her way through…
Black Vomit
'It was the unexpected event of the 2005 FIMAV festival: avant jazz legend Anthony Braxton joining noisy bad boys Wolf Eyes on-stage. But it did not come completely out of left field. A few months earlier at another festival, the 60-year-old saxophonist had attended a performance by the Michigan noise trio and was transformed, buying a copy of everything the band had to sell that night. The man had been hit in the face by noise music. At the 22nd FIMAV, Braxton was scheduled to play a duo concer…
Five Men Singing
'It was a match made in heaven, or rather on earth, at last year's 20th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. Five vocal artists on one stage—Dutch Jaap Blonk, Japanese Koichi Makigami, Canadian sound poet Paul Dutton, Englishman Phil Minton, and German new music singer David Moss—was indeed one of the highlights of the '03 Victoriaville Festival. Only mad vocalist Mike Patton was missing.
These five men had never performed together on one stage, though they have worked wi…
The Bishop's Move
'A happening. Not that these two heavyweight reedsmen had never shared a stage, but this was going to be a face-off, a clash between two of the hardest-working free improv trios on the circuit. On the left side of the stage: Evan Parker, with drummer Paul Lytton and pianist Alex von Schlippenbach, the latter filling in for bassist Barry Guy. On the right side: Peter Brötzmann and his trusty rhythm section, bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake. These are two highly experienced and gifte…
After You Gone
Reverberations from bassist Peter Kowald's passing continue to be felt two years later. Last year, a long-time bass quartet with one sub gathered to bathe Kowald's spirit in a bass balm. Comprised of close associates or admirers of Kowald, this quartet represents a summit from across borders and generations, sharing only remarkable technique and a love of the unknown.Barre Phillips helped legitimize improvised solo bass, as well as expanding its vocabulary with extended techniques. Joëlle Léandr…
Duo (Victoriaville) 2005
Anthony Braxton and Fred Frith each have about as close a relationship to the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville as just about any non-Canadians. The first release on Victo, the label run by the producers of the annual Canadian festival, was a guitar duo with Frith and Rene Lussier; the second was a duet between Braxton and Derek Bailey. Until this year, each had released three discs on the label. But 2005 was the Year of Braxton and the label has released three new Brax…
Printemps 2021
"The curious fact about this 52-minute improvisation by Rene Lussier (guitar and daxophone), Érick d'Orion (computer and electronics), Robbie Kuster (drums), and Martin Tetreault (turntables and electronics) is that, as far as we know, it was just the second indoor concert held in Canada after the pandemic started in March 2020, the second concert of the 2021 edition of the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville held in May of this year. As such, it was the first time that t…
Fixing The Fluctuating Idea
"The FIMAV performance is an extraordinary recording, an aural opportunity to hear the Ensemble exploring at length, stretching the contemporaneous studio documentation, but even with the Ensemble’s brilliant and transformative history, Sainkho Namtchylak’s spontaneous addition to Fixing is unique. Namtchylak’s intensity transcends the metaphoric. This performance is not folkloric. It is folklore. It is not shamanic. It is shamanism. The ElectroAcoustic Ensemble is one of the most significant ev…
Thirty Years In Between
The title to be taken literally, these two solo concerts recorded in Canada by French-based US bassist Barre Phillips, the first recorded at Vancouver Western Front in 1989, the 2nd from the 35th International Festival Music Festival of Victoriaville in 2019, both exemplary concerts showing his masterful skills and ability to captivate then and now.
In Transverse Time
*2022 stock* "Saxophone quartets can be an acquired taste, especially if their members are content playing supper-time jazz. However, Rova’s commitment to pushing forward, and challenging themselves and their audiences accounts for much of their perseverance. That, and talent. Their latest recording, In Transverse Time (Les Disques Victo), finds the quartet in meticulous harmony, with each player taking a measured approach to their solos. The Quartet’s members play multiple horns, but each settl…
Solo (Victoriaville) 2017
On the 30th anniversary of the Victo Festival Anthony Braxton took to the stage for a magnificent solo performance on the alto sax, performing 8 spontaneous compositions and an 8+ minute version of "Body and Soul", seamlessly crossing lyrical and complex approaches to the horn using his unique intervallic, trimbral and diagrammatic language, a stunning and embraceable accomplishment.