Pink Saliva

Improvised music is best experienced live, as much of the "information" it communicates is unavailable in studio recordings. So recording a live performance is a step in the right direction. Excitement, audience feedback and intensity are palpably present on Danse avec Robert Duncan, a three-track, three-inch, raucous CD-R EP recorded at L'envers and Casa del Popolo in Montreal. Trumpeter Gordon Allen is flat-out visceral, slashing with scabrous attacks of brass blares and squalls, pulling back to poised Harmon-muted melodic traceries. Michel F. Côté's drums and feedback provide the propulsive, forward-moving energy that makes things careen along relentlessly, even when they seem to hover in mid-air. The ten-minute first track is enveloped by a cloud of audience chatter from which emerges what sounds at times, like a Buddhist temple ritual bifurcated by pinched trumpet and clattering cymbals. Track two, clocking in at barely two minutes, is absolutely ferocious. Dense and passionate, it burns with desire, but its core of hard-to-identify sound sources makes it mysterious. Track three begins with Alexandre St. Onge's repetitive bass riff, which serves as a launching pad for drums, trumpet and feedback. At one point someone just yells, which perfectly encapsulates the life-affirming energy generated by these three sound painters.