Diane Labrosse

Diane Labrosse's album is a beast of another colour. Translated roughly as Small Treatise On Practical Wisdom, the album is a examination of 37 proverbs and their guiding power on daily life. What further marks this ambitious project is that each of the 37 tracks is presented in a different musical style and titled after a virtue or human failing: thus "Freedom," with the proverb "all madness is in nature," is delivered as a canon; "Ignorance" as a psychedelic piece; "Seduction" as a ballad and so on. Labrosse is aided and abetted by many of the label's other artists, including Joane Hetu. These 37 pieces are (necessarily) short and either flow together like water or strain like tectonic plates, but in the end they are little windows onto the lives we live.