Eric Chenaux is one of Canada’s most respected and long-standing experimental guitar players and songwriters, starting with legendary Toronto punk band Phleg Camp in the early 90s and tirelessly expanding his musical vocabulary and reach in countless improv, avant-folk, damaged jazz and contemporary music ensembles throughout the 2000s. Since 2006, Constellation has been home to Chenaux’s more overtly song-based work, his clear voice and erudite lyricism guided by an utterly unique guitar technique and a deep immersion in pop and folk traditions from medieval to post-modern.
Following the release of Eric Chenaux’s last album Say Laura (2022), The Guardian wrote “the Canadian songwriter has one of the all-time great singing voices in popular music, an intensely romantic Chet Baker-ish instrument that seems to float with piercing direction, like a paper aeroplane thrown hard through mist.” With Uncut describing his songcraft “as delicate and lovely as a rare orchid” and Record Collector praising the album’s “sublime alien balladry” such are the accolades that have accrued to Chenaux’s unique and consummately uncompromising solo music for well over a decade now.
“3 Stars On Mountain of Doom” was recorded for Richard Youngs’ 50th Birthday (a limited edition of 1 compilation CD entitled 50 Years Of Youngs) curated by Madeleine Hynes. Most of this piece is a reflection upon Richard’s Three Handed Star released on his No Fans label in 2008. I cannot count on this being true or not but I believe that he recorded it after acquiring a concertina or melodeon or some such thing, using the recording process to get to know the instrument. I have always had a fondness for this untethered reverie of his. The last section is an instrumental version of Mountain Of Doom, which Richard wrote and recorded with his son Sorely. The lyrics are fried and the song is an oddly touching and beautiful one – one of those songs that seems to just drop into the world without a hitch. Thank you Richard, Madeleine and Sorley for giving me an aberrant place to play around. – Eric Chenaux
Cornet solo that combines repetitive rhythm, DIY mutes, small percussion and bird calls stuck into the pipes. I started working on this new set during the first months of the pandemic, mostly outdoors because I couldn’t work at home. The idea caught on and I made a first live version in August 2020, in forest. Since then I’ve been playing this set in all types of places : bars, nature, parties, large resonant spaces, people’s homes, and hip places of the experimental music scene such as Café Oto, Sonic Protest, Echos, Instants Chavirés…
“There are no animations to accompany Louis Laurain’s solo but the extended technique lends itself to imagined visual equivalent in its synchronicity with the noise of everyday life. At some point the battlefield gameshow come to mind. With cartoon explosions as the cornet enters his death throes ” Deborah Nash, The Wire.
– Le Bargy – Three:four Records 2023 (CD/Tape) Slightly conceptual, this record is an attempt to map out, with a trumpet, the different acoustic spaces of a mountain. The record is called le Bargy, the name of the mountain. You can hear trumpet, rocks, waterfalls, echoes, birds nesting, toads, water drops in a large cave, a shepherd, mountain cows and their bells.
GLARC have recently released a brilliant and now sold out self titled tape by Lene Otis Finn…
The trio of Lene de Montaigu, Otis Jordan and Finn Rosenbaum, have been playing together on and off for several years in Glasgow, often in outdoor spaces and with found objects. This year they decided to capture their improvisations, and to collaboratively write music before parting ways and moving to different cities. The tape interweaves the sounds of Finn’s own bells, which he forged in Cessnock behind an abandoned swimming pool, with found objects and various instruments, such as harmonium, french horn, clarinet and analogue synthesizer.
