Chœur Tac-Til
Blind Ecosystem
FRANCE UNREC RECORDS 231 C.D. (2023)
Back in 2012, French composer/vocalist Natacha Muslera formed Chœur Tac-Til, a nine-strong conductor-less choir who were comprised of sighted and blind participants. The Blind Ecosystem c.d. comes as the culmination of a decade of free/improvised group activity where vocal pieces realised at the GMEM (National Centre for Music Creation) in Marseilles and at various outdoor sites are mixed in with audio snapshots from the Saint Baume forest, the Calanques massif and Marseilles’ Longchamp Park. A number of extras have supplemented the group over its time-span, namely cellist Aude Romary, saxophonist Michel Doneda, Mika Shigemori (vocals/shamisen) and Lionel Marchetti. In fact, the latter electronics stalwart has recently produced an untitled 16mm b/w film documenting the choir’s life and times.
The unusual warping of multiple voice dynamics (plus ambient noises-off) makes for any references to pre-echoes of the group’s fiercely individual sound a mite difficult to grasp. Rough Trade’s dada flashmob Furious Pig can be discounted for not being fully house-trained, so it’s really down to imagining Jaap Blonk and Phil Minton being commissioned to soundtrack a remake of Jack Clayton’s The Innocents, or parachuting Ligeti into a nearby rainforest… “I’m not in Love” it most certainly ain’t !! Add to this, tracks being merely labelled “Object” (these run from one to seven), Franck Omer’s ambiguous sleeve-art (a sea urchin with its own light source anyone?) and the accompanying crib-sheet’s scant info of their methodology means we seem to have a full blown enigma on our hands… But one in which kudos is rightly given to what is, humankind’s oldest musical instrument of choice.