Jacques Lasry - Chronophagie

Arion - LP

France, 1969

Avant-Garde / Experimental / Contemporary

Intricate and levitating soundscapes played on "Structures Sonores" - a set of experimental instruments designed by the Baschet brothers - by Jacques Lasry, his wife Yvette and his son Teddy Lasry. Featuring vocal experimentations by Aude Cornillac and multi-instrumentalist Jean Guérin. Deep and remarkably enjoyable.

It can be extremely hard to navigate avant-garde music, especially in its purest form - that is to say not paired with popular music genres, jazz, rock and folk - and quite hard to find the right entry door, at least for those who believe that something worth hearing lies in these somewhat austere and blurred territories. But then, there're really only two paths into it that, taken separately, won't lead anywhere: the purely historical, musicological one, and the sensitive one. The historical approach without sensitivity works for mad and senseless archivists, while the sole sensual compass will do it for people who are somehow unwillingly in contact with avant-garde music - queuing at a supermarket whose speakers blast Les Percussions de Strasbourg and John Cage perhaps. Unlike mainstream genres, it needs a form of active commitment from the listener/explorer to be enjoyed and/or understood.

 Jacques Lasry's "Structures Sonores" is both a kind of band and a set of instruments, created by the Baschet brothers, and operated by Lasry with the help of his wife, Yvette, and his son, the soon-to-be French library mogul Teddy Lasry. The fact that Jean Guérin specifically joined the band to play tablas, reveals the underlying influence of new age/eastern motives over this specific recording, and thus its purposedly meditative function. Chronophagie is a surprisingly easily enjoyable LP: rather than the highly dynamic and raucous sounds many experimental acts developped around 1969, this Structures Sonores album displays horizontal soundscapes not dissimilar to the Fluxus experimentations of La Monte Young, or Walter Marchetti and Juan Hidalgo's early piano pieces. Which, in my words, is a very good thing. (VG+/VG+)