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Right then, let’s get to the bottom of this one before a hundred other things distract us today – “For more than a decade, Montréal/ Tiohtiá:ke-based artists Chloë Lum and Yannick Desranleau have been operating together within an ultra-peculiar aesthetic space merging performance, installation, narrative, text, sculptural and choreographic elements, and strategies derived from their background in experimental music. Described as “a refreshing departure from the biennial’s dominant motif of interspecies sensing.“ by Artforum’s Jayne Wilkinson, The Garden of a Former House Turned Museum was their inventive and ambitious contribution to the 2021 MOMENTA : Biennale de l’Image. From a strictly musical standpoint, the work encompasses their most elaborate output since their days as co-founders of the internationally revered avant-rock group AIDS Wolf alongside Alexander Moskos (AKA Drainolith). The score that they’ve crafted to accompanyGarden is a far cry from the feral-concrète meets meticulous no-wave of their former band, however. Instead, it poists a knowingly wayward take on Broadway, using a series of fictitious letters to Clarice Lispector as its libretto. The mindbendingly versatile singerSarah Albu voices a plethora of dispositions, standing in for all four of the characters of the video. She’s flanked by an ensemble comprising percussion, winds, brass, bass, and cuíca that plays with a unique blend of fierce precision, cheeky lyricism, and reckless abandon. Each letter has its own unique musical tenor and along the way Lum and Desranleau embrace sonic allusions to the American Songbook, free jazz, the outskirts of contemporary opera, post-punk fragmentation, and the samba of Lispector’s native Brazil. As such, the work traverses a vast expanse, while remaining grounded by its lean arrangement style and modest run-time”.

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“This Friday”, so reads the press release that landed here yesterday, Wednesday, “the Montréal imprint No Hay Discos launches their exciting third release on CD and digital formats. The disc in question springs from the vivid imaginations of acclaimed visual artists Chloë Lum and Yannick Desranleau and serves as the soundtrack to their lavish multimedia extravaganza, Garden of a Former House Turned Museum (2021). It features the endlessly pliable voice of singer Sarah Albu, who plays multiple vocals roles throughout the work and in the context of the installation version appears as one quarter of its on-screen cast”.

“The piece posits a sung correspondence between an anonymous contemporary interlocutor and the Brazilian author Clarice Lispector (1920–77), an important 20th-century literary figure. Epistolary “Dear Clarice” prose poems guide us through Rio de Janeiro, here covered with lush nature as if human activity had simply ceased. The protagonist addresses Lispector in the beyond; there’s no response but the whispers of orchids filtering through the urban jungle”.

“Musically speaking, it’s true to say it is a disorienting blend, digesting references to Tin Pan Alley, jazz, Samba, and experimental song in peculiar, tuneful compositions with colourful arrangements – let that blend stand in the pot for a moment, these things can’t be rushed, it is an acquired taste that may take a cup or two before you really start to appreciate the qualities.  Yes, Lum and Desranleau were part of that abrasively fine avant-rock outfit AIDS Wolf, this album is their first new release since their immersion in the art-world” – I might argue AIDS Wolf were part of the art world but you know what the press release is trying to tell us, here’s our take on it, al album review if you will….

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Chloë Lum & Yannick Desranleau – The Garden of a Former House Turned Museum (Hay Discos) – The album is made up of six tracks, six letters six rather experimental pieces of music, lush, slightly rotten? Moss, graffiti, the beauty of the city, it  does have a feeling of a Broadway music play, maybe somewhere left of Broadway, not some giant production, more something going on in that weird art theatre down there, the one only the strange people go to. It is a little shock to the system, and it may not be an album available in most hardware stores, but hey once you adapt your listening position and tune in to the letters and the very strange mix of noises the band are making behind the voice(s) of “the endlessly pliable voice” of singer Sarah Albu, it is rather charming, beguiling maybe, off-hinge certainly, it might just be brilliant.  And dear readers I bought two of your books in Portuguese and I must tell you last night it sounded like madness, this morning it sounds rather wonderful, the light and shade between the words is delightful, the percussion that at times could be a typewriter, the trumpet and Dear Clarice, I want you to take these words and come fly with me. this morning, in the sunny sun of Summer (with all those paintings over there pecking at me and demanding I stop writing letters), this morning, this is delightful (in the same way AIDS Wolf can be delightful, and you know they can be) and they do tie us up in knots and before you know it you’re hanging on every word of those letters and the soundtrack of crackling nerves and frantic bits and relatively relaxed noir-flavoured jazzy bits and do other places feel dull to you?  Cities are the place of every fantasy after all and surely we all feel nervous about the future. Letter of joy, and album like no other you will hear this week, a wonderful thing. it is;nt an album you’re going to listen to everyday but you are going to want to have it there on the booksehelf so you can have them read those letters now and again, I suspect it is going to be an album to find delight in now and again Actually scrap that last bit, this might just be an album to listen to every day, each play so far has lt loose just a little more of the detail and four or five Thursday morning plays in it really is a delight… (sw)

Here’s the Bandcamp/order details and such

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And here come some more visuals, do click on an image to enlarge or t orun the slide show….