Brûlez les Meubles

Adding more items to be set ablaze as distinct music is created, Québec’s Brûlez les Meubles (burn the furniture) duo fans the flames with an additional three fire-kindlers on Folio #5. Together since 2018, Rimouski electric bassist Éric Normand and Montréal guitarist Louis Beaudoin-de la Sablonnière create seven inventive tracks with new arsonists, Montréal pianist Marianne Trude1, Toronto vibraphonist Jonathan Huard and German tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock.

Despite the vibes being the only idiophone, sounds are aggressive as well as affable. Huard’s decorative resonations are most prominent when mixed with Trudel’s measured keyboard touch on “La vie commence aujourd’hui”. Yet even here electric bass stops and guitar flanges prevent the tune from becoming slack. Otherwise group combustion is encouraged, but not so that that any person or sound is charred.

The most notable instance of this is “Vagues”, where sonorous bass thumps and vibrating guitar clips intersect with arching saxophone trills, sweeping piano glissandi and spaced vibraphone echoes. The result is an expressive tune that escalates at a vibrant pace without losing traces of lyricism. Keyboard expositions broaden to staccato, prestissimo and prominent rhythms elsewhere, often in tandem with jagged reed bites. Laubrock incites the prototypical extended saxophone snarl on “Conscience du tragique” that is met by ringing vibe reverb and pedal point piano clunks. Meanwhile guitar-bass cadences preserve horizontal advancement at all times.

Overall this is one fire listeners will not want to prevent.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Argentique 2. Conscience du tragique 3. La vie commence aujourd’hui 4. Vagues 5. Spider Song 6. Paradoxe de la joie 7. Folio

Personnel: Ingrid Laubrock (tenor saxophone); Marianne Trudel (piano); Louis Beaudoin-de la Sablonnière (guitar); Éric Normand (electric bass) and Jonathan Huard (vibraphone)

–for MusicWorks Summer 2025