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Rings
Good For Nothing

JEAN-JACQUES BIRGÉ & HÉLÈNE SAGE Rendez-Vous

CD album | gg283
French group Un Drame Musical Instantané was founded in 1976. They present an original, unclassifiable, inventive music, which drifts from jazz to electronic sounds and contemporary music. Klanggalerie has started an extensive re-issue programme with these unqiue avantgarde pioneers which will bring back their classic albums but also side projects like this one. "Rendez-Vous" was recorded in 1981 but never released. This is what group founder Birgé has to say about the recording: "I met Hélène when she was doing a performance at Espace Palikao in Paris with choreographer Lulla Card Chourlin. She was singing whilst driving an old Mercedes Benz, trying to run over Lulla, and playing double bass on its roof! I proposed her to record some improvisations at Studio GRRR as I've always done with new musicians and as I'm still doing. The connection was so great, as one can hear on this record 37 years later, that I asked her to join the 15-piece orchestra of Un Drame Musical Instantané which had just been founded. She brought some crazy stuff into the group, playing strange instruments she had invented herself. She is a wonderful flute player, but I asked her to play all kinds of instruments and also to sing, leaving her often free to improvise besides the written score. In the next years we both played as a duo and she became the fourth member of the Drame. When I listen to these pieces today, I'm surprised by the high degree of composition, the quality and variety of our inventions. The mix of acoustic and electronic instruments sounds totally contemporary, plus with the energy of youth and the absolute love for innovative forms." Full tracklist: 1. Rendez-Vous 2. En Rappel 3. Aquatics 4. Rings 5. Good For Nothing 6. Why Not 7. Grasse Matinée. Price: € 18,-/copy incl. worldwide shipping.

The seven tracks each run between three and seventeen minutes apiece, and really the whole record is like a crazed sonic chocolate box - as the pair dart over the place - both sonically and genre-wise, but also with intent going from Dada and playful, through to grooving and unbalanced, onto creepy and puzzling, onto manic and deranged, through to off-kilter theatrical and showy. It really is an album that you never know what is around the next sonic coroner. So if you are in the mood for an album that will equally puzzle, amuse and challenge - then Rendez-vous will certainly do the job. It is great to see Klanggalerie releasing these sonic oddities from the past, and especially when they have never been released before - heres looking forward to some more releases in a similar vein from the label.
(Musique Machine, February 2019)

Quand on écoute les disques d Un Drame Musical Instantané ou son duo avec Francis Gorgé, rien ne semble vraiment ancien, plutôt intemporel, tant la soif de nouveauté est forte. Les sons vintage des synthés, les décors sonores narratifs et les détours nécessaires nous guident toujours vers un imaginaire fort. Rendez-Vous, où l on retrouve un Birgé outrageusement chevelu avec la flûtiste Hélène Sage, n échappe pas à la règle; les grooves équilibristes d’ En Rappel, heurtés par les aigus saillants des appâts d oiseaux, ne semblent appartenir à aucun temps. Sauf au sien. (...) La complicité avec Hélène Sage est évidente, elle qui fut presque à demeure la quatrième voix de UDMI. Elle joue avec les synthétiseurs comme un oiseau se moque du chat et frôle ses moustaches pour l agacer plus encore (Rings), elle chante aussi pour apporter un surplus d étrangeté.
(Citizen Jazz, April 2019)