liberum arbitrium

morceaux_de_machines, a history

The genesis of morceaux_de_machines goes back to the middle of the 1990s in Québec City, when Aimé Dontigny and Érick Dorion host “Napalm Jazz” on CKIA-FM, a weekly two-hour radioshow where the listener is treated to the most advanced sound experimentation one could find anywhere on the airwaves. Mixing together avant-garde, hip-hop, free jazz, electronic & other found musics, the two accomplices were beginning to build an aesthetic which follows them to this day.

In 1998, Napalm Jazz becomes a full-fledged band, with the arrival of saxophonist Philémon. Their only album, Free transgénique, is recorded and becomes one of the first releases on the No Type label, and is to this day one of the most popular releases on the MP3 catalogue. In 2000, the radioshow ends, but the group persists, and has been witnessed live in the company of people like Martin Tétreault and Sam Shalabi.

But the infernal duo of Aimé Dontigny and Érick Dorion, this hard pit always being broken up for the sake of sublime sonic pleasure, is still around: it is now known as morceaux_de_machines.

If there is hardly a radio in sight in their toolbox, one can be sure that Dontigny and Dorion have kept intact the immediate and uncompromising side of their approach from the first years. A highly skilled pair of improvisers, they know how to drive the consenting listener on a sonic adventure which will leave them with their mouth gaping. But if this dynamism and this tension seem almost theatrical to us, it’s a sort of théâtre de la cruauté we’re really talking about, impermeable to the false sentimentality of harmony, ferociously deconstructive of deifying systems such as Bach’s.

Is it just noise? No, there is much more than just noise in these exuberant, life-affirming soundtracks. Just as there is more to the loudness of their composition than a superficial affront to musics which are too easy to like, or too modest. If our machinist acrobats make such a ruckus, it’s because they are acutely conscious of the risk their acrobatics entail. That said and done, we are left with a music that is lively, highly personal and full of depth.