Jac Berrocal continues to confound and puzzle with his inscrutable trumpet, and he’s back today with his “wrecking crew” team – David Fenech and Vincent Epplay, forming a dream trio that has been causing havoc and coach pileups in one form or another since 2015 – just reel off that list of brackish, psychotic releases: Antigravity, Ice Exposure, Exterior Lux, Xmas in March, Transcodex…I haven’t even collected all of these titles myself and can’t hold my head high in avant-broom circles as a result.
Today’s item Broken Allures (COLD SPRING RECORDS CSR339CD) follows their trusted pathway – all performances, voices and instruments subjected to twisted studio treatments and processes that induce maximal madness and distort all rebakes and rope ladders into nightmarish dimensions, in as much time as it takes a French chef to whip up a pink macaron inside a smoked trout. Fenech on guitars, bass, drums, sequencers…Epplay filling in on synths, samples, and diabolical tape recordings, sound effects and field recording captures…label is correct to hint at some form of “musique concrète” approach in the final mix, but even this clue doesn’t convey the unhinged genius found in these splicing touchettes, where spontaneity and crazed imaginative skills are privileged above the mode of academic pondering and deliberation of the IRCAM school. As such, Berrocal remains true to what I regard as his post-punk hero influences that have helped mould his jazz improvisations since the 1980s – and just check out that recent Catalogue record if you’re inclined to doubt this – and he still embodies the vocal loopery and zaned-out terrorthons that Stapleton evidently admired (and could never imitate successfully, try as he may).
Speaking of “that period” from English underground music, Cosey Fanni Tutti (of all people) is also here, adding chilling lyrics sung in equally unsettling voice on two tracks, and electric guitar on a third – ‘Viva La Hacienda’, as it happens, one of the stand-outs on the whole set and we’d like to think a nod in direction of Manchester and Joy Division. Speaking of Public Image Limited – which we weren’t exactly – Jah Wobble also surfaces from 20 fathoms to add his bass blorrks to the title track, and indeed it might be that element that so cheerfully drives this strong piece down its death-disco inflected dubby pathway back to the rocky beach. With Berrocal’s echoplexed trumpet writhing on top like three deep-sea fish about to be fried in the pan, we’ve got a harshoid-horror studio mash that Martin Rushent would only have dreamed about, and even the ghost of Teo Macero raises one toenail from his perch in paradise. To lock the case up tight, the opening track was inspired by ‘Warszawa’ by Bowie and Eno, and on ‘Coiffeur Pour Vince (Tu Sais La Mort)’ we have, wouldn’t it be fair to say, a deliberate throwback to Berrocal’s immortal ‘Rock’n’Roll Station’ from 1976, that surreal re-imagining of early American rock and roll – which this time around throws in an additional verbal salute to Johnny Burnette.
As with previous outings by the trio, the music seems (to me) to be taking place in near-darkness, and the poetic surrealist sound-poetry of this great man Berrocal both confuses and illuminates the mind like a green candle. Recommended! (10/10/2024)