Dans Les Arbres are the European improvising quartet of French player Xavier Charles with the three Norwegians Ivar Grydeland, Christian Wallumrod, and Ingar Zach, and we noted their long career when we heard their fourth album Volatil from 2019.
They’re back again with L’Album Vert (ASPEN EDITIES Aspen020), where once again their brittle, simple style is to the fore, this time resulting in a rather cryptic set of improvised chamber-music utterances. One of the underpinning notions is that the musicians are providing music for an “imaginary dance floor”, a scenario that only exists in their own minds as they perform, and it’s impossible not to visualise the wide-eyed pixie-like folk who might be stepping onto the tableau for this uncanny dance. At any rate, that’s the blueprint for Side B, where there are indeed some electronic sounds to be savoured. On Side A, we’re presented with riddles about “the eyes that listen” and “the ears that see”, as if an absurdist modernist poet from 1920s Paris had joined the recording session to make his pithy comments from the sidelines as he sipped his cognac and stroked his goatee.
There’s plenty of dynamic gaps and spaces in the musical fabric of Dans Les Arbres, and it’s a good sign that here are musicians who respect each other enough to do that, while still managing to inject a good dose of quirkoid odd-shape dough malarkey into each one of their short, abbreviated statements. Statements which they then repeat and repeat again as needed. There’s also a good balance of acoustic – Charles’ clarinet, Zach’s gran casa and other percussion objects, Wallumrod’s prepared piano – with the electric guitar of Grydeland and the electronic interventions of Wallumrod and Zach. A strong set with many pointers and signposts for further explorations in the field of contemporary free improvisation. Vinyl release with artwork by the painter Marina Rheingantz. (19/12/2024)