// Diatribes "Interconnexion"

STX02 | 04-2006 | 4 tracks | 51 min | improvisation

music under a creative commons by-nc-nd licence

Datribes began its existence under another name d’incise d’où inductions in a Geneva basement in winter 2004. The idea behind the band was to mix three distinct sources (wind, percussion and electronic) in order to develop a malleable mass of sound. The saxophone and drums get confused with the treatment of their own sound, in a primary dance, where construction and destruction coexist, and envy and disgust unite. The relationship with the audience is deep and intimate. Dreams and fears become noise and silence.

Magnetic encounter of a formation exploding with the desire of pure free expression, putting forward the interaction of its members, their intensity and their fluctuating levels of energy. A breath, shivers crepitate, rumblings, a mass emerges, fracas and chaos, between free jazz and electro acoustic.

A type of rage too long contained, a feeling of disenchantment with a society that leaves us in a state of doubt. Infused with the urban nature of our lives, the sound builds itself up, distorts itself, tears itself away from reason, implodes and becomes a dream that lies behind our eyelids.

Cyril Bondi: drums, percussions, tibetan horn

Gaël Riondel: saxophone & flute

D’Incise: objects

cover: Shape2

photos: D'Incise

- Diatribes website: dincise.net/diatribes

- HOLLOW TREE EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC REPORT BLOG par Zeno Izen | 2006

I really wanted to write a nice thorough review of the netrelease "Interconnexions" by Diatribes. I went about the project the way I usually do, listening and making notes and trying to decide upon a theme or two around which I could construct an essay of six or seven paragraphs. Unfortunately, after about 100 listens and a thousand words of notes I began to realize that this music is probably over my head.

That's not to say that I don't understand the music. I think I do. However, there is something in it which I should not attempt to articulate. The musicians are stepping off from a territory with which I am not familiar. Or they are aiming at a target which I am not able to see. Everything in this four-song release is enjoyable and well-played, not to mention flawlessly produced. But saying this is not enough to constitute a true-to life record review. Formal criticism, in general, should be a means to using human culture to triangulate truths about our existence. Among the many faces of any cultural artifact are the creator's intent, the actuality of the creation and the viewer or listener's reaction to the artifact. In criticism, the critic is meant to take his or her reaction and transmute it into yet another creative intent by which to produce yet another creation, in this case the review.

The magic of criticism is that it not only creates a particular reaction in its audience, the same as any other cultural artifact, but also effects the audience's perception of an entirely separate artifact: that artifact under critical scrutiny. In this way, criticism acts like a third language on a metaphorical Rosetta Stone, giving another valuable perspective, and a deeper insight into our culture and assists in translating what our culture is trying to say about our lives as humans on the planet Earth.

That's the ideal, at least from my point of view. I wasn't able to get that ball rolling with this record, though. After a period of time, as will most always happen, I grew weary of listening to the same music over and over again. My only choice was to abandon the project.

Rather than let all that work go to waste, though, I am presenting here some of the more interesting notes that I've made. I also want to add that overall I think that this is a very good collection of music, and I commend the artists for releasing it for free download on the internet. There are more works by Diatribes and d'Incise out there if you take the time to look. I've sampled bits and pieces of it, and I'd be confident to say that it's all worth gathering onto your hardrive or iPod. This is not two-bit spastic bedroom joke-folk, by any stretch of the imagination. This is real music, seriously intended and appears to be well separated from the International Recording Industry racket.

Edited notes:

Net labels, and the free mp3 recordings that they release on the internet, represent the future of music both in the music they feature and the marketing and distribution methods that they employ. Internet music is the most important thing going in the recorded arts right now. Unfortunately, the quality of these releases is widely variable. Anyone can record something and put it on the internet, but not everyone should.

That's why it's comforting to hear a collection such as Diatribe's "Interconnections." At first, this recording might not seem worth the time, a free (in more than one sense) avant-jazz net release. But really, this is good. The musicians are good; the recording quality is good; the composition is good, too. Every minute is interesting, for one reason or another. Diatribes cruises through a series of weird rooms, flashing the lights and rearranging the furniture as they go.

The musicians are obviously extremely competent with their weapons. It's not frequent enough that musicians who can actually play apply themselves to the more adventureable fjords of the musical coast.

The personnel are: Laurent Peter aka "d'incise" on laptop, objects, treatements; Cyril Bondi plays drums, other percussions and the Tibetan horn; Gaël Riondel plays the reed instruments (tenor and alto saxophones, clarinet) and the flute.

d'Incise seems to have set the computers aside for this collection, instead entering his audible contributions with "ojects" that seem to be an array of solid metal things that creak, zing and vibrate throughout the compositions.

At about 4:30 in the second track ("interconnexions 2.1"), Mr d'incise does a nice job of making your speakers sound as if they are shorting out.

Riondel's sax gets into some good old goose honking. Other moments of saxophone are warm like rising steam and still others evoke elephants and jazz funerals.

This can't be called mood music, because whatever mood you're in or trying to be in, these guys are going to match it for about a minute and a half, tops.

One of the first things to stand out on this record are the drums. Both the playing and the treament of the drums are very strong here. Cyril Bondi's handling of the percussion instruments reveals his Afro-Cuban and his jazz studies. Listening to some of the passages that focus on Bondi, I get a vaguely-formed vision of him halfway up from the stool, reaching for the far drums. The drums are recorded loud and clear, too. It's always nice to hear good drumming brought to the front of the mix, no matter what kind of music it is. Usually, high-quality percussion, plainly wrought is something you have to purposefully look for. Art Blakey and Ginger Baker don't even get respect from the control booth half the time.

Be warned, though. This recording is not built for boogie (although they do get into some rousing grooves about ten or eleven minutes into the third track (2.1), among other places.) Diatribes addresses a wild variety of moods. They cop a smoothly transitioning series of attitudes, sometimes evoking atmospheres to the point that they may be clearly visualized by the listener. In one stretch of time, Diatribes suggest everything from tropical flora to the filthy far ends of abandoned lumber mills to the funeral rites of forgotten cultures.

Perhaps this is a subtle effect we can look forward to from the home-studio movement. Percussion has been the core of music since back in the days of bones and stones. But modern recordings have more often than not have treated the instrument-that-is-not-an-instrument as some sort of sidebar or something. This is, no doubt, a result of the 64-track process. When you've got 64 tracks, you're naturally going to multimic the drum kit, and that's naturally going to you less time to set up each of those mics causing you to rush the setup and level check. But all of those isolated microphones inevitably get bounced to one track, usually unedited. Now you're back to a single drum track, but it sounds awful and so you mix it down deep where no one can hear it.

Meanwhile, a scrappy troupe of independent producers run a single mic from the drums to the Powerbook. It sounds crystal clear and good as hell.

The beginning minute or of the fourth track, "interconnexion2.3" is good treatment of Bondi's drumming. It's a moment of particular intensity.

This is the kind of recording that you can listen to an indefinite number of times and there is always more listening to do. Like a high-quality auteur flick or abstract painting, this four-track album doesn't overexplain itself.