Montreal-based imprint Small Scale Music is slowly becoming a label to watch for those interested in adventurous music. Last year, the label dropped KATABASIS / ANABASIS, a solid double bass workout from Toronto ex-pat Aaron Lumley, and this recent cassette, filled with crystalline reverberations from veteran Montreal experimentalist Philippe Lauzier, really showcases the curatorial chops of the Small Scale Music cabal.
Lauzier is known as a reed player, yet with DÔME he showcases the results of an installation in which he prepared a set of bells, zithers and motors, accompanying the clangour with a Korg synthesizer drone. Surprisingly beautiful, the two 17-minute pieces achieve a stunning sense of musicality, as the shimmering vortices of sound are almost hallucinatory. Lauzier manipulates his host of rotating implements so that they rub, strike and glide across their metallic counterparts, while the synth supplies a complementary backdrop of slowly morphing drones. The rising and falling of the action gives the songs a feeling of structure, where one might expect complete chaos.
It's this ability of Lauzier's, to wrangle the unwieldy nature of his 'instruments' into a euphonious set of compositions, that sets DÔME up as an exemplar of high quality, installation-based experimental music.
(Small Scale Music)Lauzier is known as a reed player, yet with DÔME he showcases the results of an installation in which he prepared a set of bells, zithers and motors, accompanying the clangour with a Korg synthesizer drone. Surprisingly beautiful, the two 17-minute pieces achieve a stunning sense of musicality, as the shimmering vortices of sound are almost hallucinatory. Lauzier manipulates his host of rotating implements so that they rub, strike and glide across their metallic counterparts, while the synth supplies a complementary backdrop of slowly morphing drones. The rising and falling of the action gives the songs a feeling of structure, where one might expect complete chaos.
It's this ability of Lauzier's, to wrangle the unwieldy nature of his 'instruments' into a euphonious set of compositions, that sets DÔME up as an exemplar of high quality, installation-based experimental music.