Etherreal (FR)

Much like what artists offer as opening acts at the GRM, the Larum duo performed a few passages from the Treatise by Cornelius Cadrew, a British composer of contemporary music who died in 1981. This Treatise is considered his masterpiece, particularly for the way in which the score is written, a series of geometric shapes far removed from traditional notes and rests (only the empty staves are present at the bottom of the page). Using some of these annotations on the sleeve and in the booklet of this CD, released on CD for its physical format, the American group transcribed two concerts given in New York: three pieces recorded at Public Records (the venue, at once a record store, tea room, and small concert hall, where we had seen Lucrecia Dalt during our last stay in the megalopolis) and three others at the Fridman contemporary art gallery, located in the heart of Manhattan.

For these two performances, and the connection with 12k was obvious, Larum teamed up with Taylor Deupree, invited to add his electronic contributions to those of Micah Frank, while Chet Doxas played the saxophone. Throughout this substantial double half-hour set, the same songs are featured, the setlist being identical from one concert to the next, but the interpretation was free enough to offer variations and maintain the listener’s interest. In this respect, Chet Doxas’s contributions play a real role with their regular interventions, in small snatches but without the “spluttered” quality that this type of offering can sometimes induce, preferring here a deep breath, even if it isn’t sustained over time. He can also act through quivering forms, perfectly suited to the electronics of his two companions, successions of layers and micro-electronic contributions, between glitches and chromatic fragments.

When the electronics take on more industrial trappings, the saxophone’s contributions are more emphatic and languid (Treatise 76 (Live at Public Records)). These richer, sometimes more charged aspects are reinforced in the versions given at the Fridman gallery, with a more marked granularity of the electronics, quasi-metallic strikes, as well as a more connected character of the saxophone lines (which even ends up, at the end of the disc, by detaching themselves more frankly). It is therefore probably rather towards this second side of the album that we will turn when we listen again to this album by Larum, a group that we are, in any event, interested to have discovered.