French free improvisation on the record Delightfully Deceitful (CIRCUM DISC microcidi045), played by the trio Manoeuvres Sentimentales. Laurent Rigaut on saxophone / reeds, Andrea Bazzicalupo on guitar, and Peter Orins on drums. “Energy” and “complexity” are their watchwords while performing, and the writer Guy Grudzen goes to considerable lengths in prose to describe the highly individual ways in which this group treat “notes”, almost as if each note were something you could pick from a tree like a rare fruit. They don’t necessarily eat the fruits, but they like to juggle and watch them roll. The music’s just too bitty and disjunctive for me on today’s listening; the trio may bring that wild energy to the session, but they can’t make their sounds cohere. Bazzicalupo manages some unusual percussive sounds on his instrument, I think by muffling his strings (on track 02); he can also produce drawn-out sounds perhaps by controlling feedback or simply with a sustain pedal (track 03, called ‘Into the Boiling Sand’). And he’s allowed to get atonal and alienated on track 04, ‘Just Infinite of Nought’. Hope these quasi-philosophical titles are doing something for ya. I seem to be singling out the work of the guitarist for my faves. It’s probably because I’m not really enjoying the excessive parps of Rigaut, who to my mind is stuck in the 1980s school of skittery improv. But others may enjoy the total effect of this trio’s work. (23/04/2025)
