Eric St-Laurent

This recording is not what it might seem at first glance, which is a reverential homage to Turkish music. Instead, by girding the devilishly tricky compositions in reduced melodic garments of three notes and revealing them in complex metric threads, composer/guitarist/keyboardist Eric St-Laurent makes his cross-cultural hybrid personal and engaging. Sure, some pieces like the introductory "Taksim" and "Dimensions d'Instanbul" have a strong Turkish flavour and the presence of Bikem Küçük on percussion and Turygay Hikmet on bass clarinet and keys brings authenticity and expertise. But pieces like "Le Feu Grec" and "Le Grand Bazar," conceived with sampler, sequencer and a techno lover's feel for glitches, morphed audio and repetition, would be equally at home on a club dance floor as at a world music concert. Meticulously conceived and realized, with well-recorded sound and exquisitely beautiful artwork, Dimensions d'Instanbul is an outstanding document of a gifted creative artist.