Album of restrained, minimal and respectful acoustic improvisation by Jean-Luc Guionnet and Lê Quan Ninh on Those Whose Dads Never Met (CCAM EDITIONS vdo2353).
Guionnet has been producing very impressive large-scale, multi-dimensional collaborative enterprises of late, often occupying that increasingly well-colonised zone between composition and improvisation, and leaving me with the impression of many players scattered around the rooms of a large building, hopefully a disused art gallery, and playing for a week at a time to realise a new hope for the cosmic destiny of man. But one mustn’t overlook his skills as a solo saxophone player. If you enjoy the sound of the alto played with brio and gusto, buy some Eric Dolphy records; but tune in here if you want to hear considered, measured tones which glide through the soul with the ease of a flying drone exploring the Grand Canyon.
Lê Quan Ninh, veteran Parisian percussionist and founding member of Quatuor Hêlios (to join it, you have to be a Man from the Sun), is a fellow I haven’t heard enough, but his credentials could get him the equivalent of a Swiss bank account in the cut-throat world of New Music. His contributions to Variations VII for Epicentre Editions, an astonishing realisation of John Cage’s ideas, were as non-pareil as a sedan chair made of melons; not only playing on that record, he recorded it, annotated it, and displayed deep comprehension of the layered moving parts to that complicated exploit. What he’s doing on this record continues to puzzle marine biologists around the globe, but he can make a membrane resonate until it produces the voice of thunder and he can scrape bare metal in ways that pass beyond the noise-barrier into sublime clouds of joy.
Bien entendu, the French duo have to perform very slowly on these September 2022 recordings taped by Nils de Deyne (with special dispensation from the Embassy), so these sound-generating actions do not manifest as indulgences in extended technique, mere exercises for the bony fingers, but are rather drawn from a deep well of emotional hessian. One pocket of this deep well is earmarked “you think you know a guy”. You see, the angle which the press release is trying to work is that these two geniuses are both French, about the same age, both working in free improvisation, have passed like ships in the night on many occasions and written mutual billets-doux to each other, yet have never played together in a tournament. By the latter I mean they never performed or made a record together, until this one, although a diligent score-keeper might include a brief foray in 2014 which was connected to the journal Revue & Corrigée and its Raymond Leblanc-styled svengali editor. As part of this general misunderstanding, it seems that Ninh was convinced their fathers knew each other, yet they’d never even met up. Hence the title, of which the album comprises five variations on that sentence. In like manner, it’s possible to read every puff, every hammer, and every pregnant pause as replete with meaning and doubt.
If this had been re-enacted with more egotistical musicians in the field, the result would have been a feisty double album called My Dad Can Beat up Your Dad. But instead, they’re like two wild animals sizing each other up, using trunk, whiskers and fur to gradually come to some mutual recognition. From 2nd January 2024.