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TOC — Did It Again
(Circum-Disc CIDI2202, 2022, 4CD)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2022-10-10

Did It Again Cover art

TOC: Jérémie Ternoy, Peter Orins, and Ivann Cruz, on electric piano, drums ,and electric guitars respectively. Pure improvisation, nothing pre-composed or even pre-rehearsed, living on the knife’s edge, the three players just listening to one another as they plan their next moves. The group has been together for fifteen years now, and Did It Again is their tenth album. Madness, chaos, simmering beauty, theirs is a musical world where almost anything can happen, at least within the limits of the instruments they play and effects they apply to them. To be fair, Ternoy also doubles on piano bass in addition to Fender Rhodes, but that bit of information still won’t prepare the listener any better for the tsunami of sound they are about to face, essentially void of any conventional structure as each piece just evolves freely in your presence. After almost two years of not being able to play any live dates on count of the pandemic, the trio which thrives on confrontation with its audience was finally able to schedule a series of dates in Eastern Europe, a dozen odd dates of wild, raw and rejuvenating performances of uncompromising music were set to begin in October 2021, taking the trio through places like Poznan, Budapest, and others, finally circling back to their home base in Lille. Along the way, several of these concerts were recorded, three of which are presented in this four disc set. The first disc was recorded at the Spontaneous Music Festival at the Dragon Social Club in Poznan in west-central Poland, the entire set consisting of a single 40-minute track that grows and ebbs and constantly evolves over its duration. The second set on disc two came from the middle of the tour at the Lumen club In Budapest, Hungary — a complete over-the-top performance that can at times go just about anywhere and everywhere. Disc three is one 44-minute track from their homecoming set in Lille on October 10th. Each of these is unique in its respective approach, and showcases a bursting of energy, sometimes flat-out, other times subdued, but always uniquely TOC. So what’s on that fourth disc? TOC’s first album from 2009, Le Gorille has been out of print for many years now, the recordings taken from one of their very first concerts, recorded at the same venue in Lille where the 2021 tour completed; so they included it here as a bonus, the three tracks offering the listener an opportunity to see how far the trio have come along their amazing fifteen-year journey.

Filed under: New releases, 2022 releases

Related artist(s): TOC (Ternoy / Cruz / Orins), Ivann Cruz, Peter Orins

More info
http://tocmuzzix.bandcamp.com/

 

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