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Chloë Lum & Yannick Desranleau — The Garden of a Former House Turned Museum
(Bandcamp No Hay Discos NHD 003, 2023, CD / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2024-01-28

The Garden of a Former House Turned Museum Cover art

Chloë Lum and Yannick Desranleau are Canadian musicians who are known for being members of the noise rock band AIDS Wolf from 2003 to 2012. I’ve listened to only a little of that band’s music, but I find it very abrasive and hard to listen to, but this album bears no resemblance to that sound aside from a spirit of reckless disregard for musical conventions. The Garden of a Former House Turned Museum is the musical portion of a multimedia presentation that includes video, physical objects, and dance. The concept of the piece centers around a set of six letters written by an anonymous narrator to the Brazilian author Clarice Lispector (1980-77), and there is no attempt to wrangle the letters into the regular metric patterns of poetry. The prose words are sung by Sarah Albu, and she does an amazing job with the unconventional material. The vocal work reminds me of such groups as The Science Group and the great Kew.Rhone by John Greaves, Peter Blegvad, and Lisa Herman. The ghost of Carla Bley is present as well. In spite of the challenging melodies, Albu’s voice is not abrasive, and she puts just the right amount of jazz inflection into the words. The instrumental backing for the vocals consists of brass, flute, bass, drums, and percussion, and it often has a jazzy flair, allowing the trumpets and trombones to elaborate on the parts like a New Orleans street band. The percussion brings in touches of Brazil at times, but on the whole the music is brilliantly original and unpredictable. As for the names on the cover, their contributions are in the composition area, though Desranleau does play  percussion on one track. The Garden of a Former House Turned Museum is a fascinating work of art, and the music stands on its own even without the video and other facets of the full performance.

Filed under: New releases, 2023 releases

Related artist(s): Chloë Lum & Yannick Desranleau

More info
http://lum-desranleau.bandcamp.com/album/the-garden-of-a-former-house-turned-museum

 

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