Michel Blanc, Le Miroir des Ondes

Composer-drummer Michel Blanc comes through with a 33-minute chamber-electric work called Les Miroir des Ondes (Ayler 151). It was meant to capture the composer's reaction to a number of historical events that took place in his experience between 1972 and 1989. A track of event-related voices and sounds continuously blends with the chamber group's music, in a sense pinning the music with the experiences they were meant to comment upon.

The work is a seamless melange of new music, rock elements and new jazz overtones, performed magnificantly by Marc Ducret on electric guitar, Annabelle Playe, vocals, Anne Giminez, piano, Antonin Rayon, organ, and Blanc himself on drums and percussion.

The music has a wealth of arresting aural events that continually segue one with the other, creating long unfolding mood auralities that fascinate and draw the listener in.

It is a unique and very worthy piece, modern without allying to definite style categories, synthetic yet rather wondrously distinctive.

I've heard nothing quite like this out there before. Viva Michel Blanc!