Le Grand Sbam – Janus (Dur et Doux) – What do we have here then? A full blown experimental operatic adventure that hints at rock, at the most avant ends of rock’s tentacles. It is finally here, Grand Sbam’s new album Janus is out, and out on the ever rewarding Dur et Doux label. Record label culture is still a thing, there are still a handful of labels you want to look for, that you can still trust, that still have a proper identity as well as a reason, labels that everything must be dropped for, labels like Cuneiform, SkinGraft and the home of Grand Sbam as well as the one eyed horse that is brilliant French label Dur et Doux. Here with Janus, an ‘Opéra Cthulhu’ composed and co-written by Thomas Arnera and Antoine Arnera, Grand Sbam, or as they are increasingly becoming, the Grand Sbam Orchestram set out on the not so small journey that is a quest to reconnect humanity with the living world…
“With humour and poetry, Janus pays a triple tribute to a courageous scientist, a revolutionary biologist-philosopher and to the powerful spirit of the Innu people” They say it is nourished by both early music and the energy of rock, that the aim is to deliver music steeped in the wild worlds of biology and astrophysics; Janus is thrilling, Janus is thrilliant. We’re on a real roll with new albums at the moment – Cheer Accident, Slift, Fucked Up, Michael J Sheehy – and we make no apologies for being thrilled about it all, this is why we still do this (stupid) thing, this new Grand Sbam album is going to be right up there with the best of the year when the reckoning comes and of course Grand Sbam are always thrilling, we expect nothing less. The French band or collective or multi-limbed musical insect are rather unique, each of their albums is rather unique, there is very much a distinctive Grand Sbam sound although they never quite repeat what they did last time. This time they sounds like armies of scuttling insects, or maybe flocks of birds too busy running here and there to actually remember they can fly; this is brilliantly busy. All in French, that never distracts or detracts for those of us who can only pick up little bits, indeed it attracts, there’s something about the urgency of the French language and especially when it is sung with such flamboyant colour like this of this self-proclaimed “philosophical-zoological, zoopunk, Cthulhu, ecofeminist album”. What are they on about though? Holy merde once more!
We’re running around operatic loops that explore compost, fossils and the dead, all through novel musical and lyrical practices of course. They’re from Lyon (of course again); “Le Grand Sbam is a collective of creation, research and musical experimentation that defends living music in all its richness, complexity and universality”, of course they do! And it is so so rich (once more), this time even more of a collective ritual, a hybridisation of the living, a breathtaking piece of music where waves, rhythmic loops and organic flows dissolve us into a multiple entity – a holobiont and a whole set of fairground rides.millipedes and high wire adventures.
A full blown experimental operatic adventure that hints at rock, at the most avant ends of rock’s tentacles where bands like Magma lurk, where the colour combinations are different, unexpected. Obtuse but never difficult, never awkward, well never too awkward, La Grand Sbam always sound natural, instinctive, composition that invites rather then fends off, this is challenging in all the right ways, something indeed “essential to the balance of life”, it also extremely enjoyable. Extremely enjoyable, properly spectacular classical avant rock music, thrillingly so… thrilliant. (sw)
Bandcamp / grandsbam.org / duretdoux.com
Previously
ORGAN THING: Qu’est-ce que le Grand Sbam ? Un groupe de bonne ambiance? A group of good atmosphere?
ORGAN THING: Qu’est-ce que le Grand Sbam? De la musique savante jouée par des ignorants…
THE ORGAN 