Music Reviews from the Staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House

March 8, 2021
Today we share a few thoughts about two recently released recordings featuring the French saxophonist, vocalist, improviser and composer, Alexandra Grimal, in distinct duo collaborations with French percussionist, Edward Perraud, and Brussels-based vocalist, Lynn Cassiers.

unsui - Alexandra Grimal & Edward Perraud
Label: self-released via Bandcamp
Catalog #: None
Country: France
Release Date: December 14, 2021
Media: digital files
bandcamp.com entry
discogs.com entry
musician's website Alexandra Grimal
musician's website Edward Perraud

One of the rewarding aspects of listening to creative improvisors is their tendency to participate in many, various ensembles with different musicians. When one musician in particular catches a listener's ear, their records can serve as an introduction to other musicians, previously unknown to the listener, who then may provide their own novel connections, each a link in a chain of musical associations. This mechanism has borne good fruit many times over for the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House.

As a point of reference, we discovered the music of Alexandra Grimal by following the musics of American percussionist and composer, Tyshawn Sorey, (with whom Grimal appears on Andromeda (Ayler Records, 2012)) and French bassist and vocalist, Joëlle Léandre, a seminal figure in European Free Improvisation (with whom Grimal partners on such records as Désordre (Montagne Noir, 2019, PPPH review)). In this specific instance, as we follow the musical adventures of Alexandra Grimal, she has led us to discover more fully two collaborators, the first of which is the French percussionist, actor and composer, Edward Perraud.

Only recently had we heard the playing of Edward Perraud at all. He has a distinguished career as actor and composer, of which we are, at this time, wholly ignorant. Musically, we had a passing exposure when he appeared as one of twenty-eight accompanists to Jean-Jacques Birgé on pique-nique au labo (GRRR, 2020, PPPH review)). Among twenty-eight, Perraud's contributions did not register in our ears. However in this duet with Ms. Grimal, his percussion sensibilities are much more clearly evident.

On unsui, Ms. Grimal plays several saxophones (tenor, soprano, sopranino) to Mr. Perraud's percussion accompaniment. From the first moments of the opening track, the extended reverberations from (perhaps) cymbals mix the sounds of air moving through the saxophone to provide an introduction to the sort of music one will encounter on the record. It is contemplative and improvisational, suitable to be categorized as "jazz" only as a nod to the instrumentation and the improvised esthetic. It could just as easily be described as "sound sculptures". The title sediments calls to mind material settling under the influence of gravity in a liquid medium and this description seems consistent with the music, though only for the first track!

Each of the four tracks on the album, which runs nearly three-quarters of an hour in total, possesses its own unique nature. We hear intimations of Steve Lacy's rigorous exercising of the instrument in Ms. Grimal's saxophone acrobatics of the second track, Petits Cailloux. The percussion plays the role of keeping pace with its energetic partner. We could offer thoughts on each track individually but a reader's time would be better spent listening to the music themselves and forming their own opinions!

Let us close with the thought that this record appeared at the end of the year 2020 without excessive fanfare to even those who supposed that they maintain an interest in such matters. We discovered it a couple months after its release and, as is almost always the case in such circumstances, the unexpectedness of the find only served to increase the enjoyment it provided.

Hi Birds - Lynn Cassiers & Alexandra Grimal
Label: self-released via Bandcamp
Catalog #: None
Country: France
Release Date: March 8, 2021
Media: digital files
bandcamp.com entry
discogs.com entry
musician's website Lynn Cassiers
musician's website Alexandra Grimal

Hi Birds is an album of duets by Alexandra Grimal in partnership with vocalist, Lynn Cassiers, who also performs on electronics. We initially supposed that we were unfamiliar with the music of Ms. Cassiers, but it turned out that this impression was a result of faulty memory. With a little research, we discovered that Ms. Cassiers and Ms. Grimal have an extended relationship, with Cassiers playing the role of Ruissellement in the clandestine opera of Ms Grimal, la vapeur au-dessus du riz (Ovni, 2020) as well as contributing to the earlier septet Nāga (Ovni, 2019).

When musicians name albums with titles that evoke birds, a listener supposes that they may find music evocative of birdsong in the recording. However, on Hi Birds Ms. Cassiers and Ms. Grimal, armed with their voices, electronics and soprano saxophone, create a music that, if it harkens to a particular avian species, must correspond to one as of yet unknown to science. We heard no sounds that called to mind the conventional tweeting of the robin or warbling of the vireo, nor the mechanical whirring of kingfishers, nor the hooting of owls nor the familiar multi-faceted song of mockingbirds. Instead we were greeted by voices, sometimes modulated, electronic noodling and reeds, none of which instantly identified themselves as bird-like. We were faced with the conclusion that our intuition about the kind of music to expect was completely wrong. Oh, happy coincidence to be both wrong and surprised on the same day!

What we did find on Hi Birds was the same variety of pleasure that one finds in bird-watching, which is an activity best enjoyed with friends. Birdwatchers wander into uninhabited spaces, a wooded lot or a forested mountain. Almost never it is the eye that alerts the practiced hand to the presence of their quarry. Instead it is a song, high in a tree. The watchers freeze in unison. Craning their necks upward, they wait for one among their number to spot a sign of motion and silently point it out to the others. In this way, listening to either Ms. Cassiers and Ms. Grimal pause and one call out an unexpected sound so that the other might have the opportunity to respond to it, reminded us of our own past birdwatching hikes.

We note again, because it is our hang-up to classify a thing in order to better understand it, that describing this music as "jazz" is mostly a concession that "jazz" rolls off the tongue more easily than does "non-idiomatic improvisation", which would more accurately describe the absence of a common genre for the likes of Hi Birds. As we noted in an earlier review of another duet by Alexandra Grimal, this one with Benjamin Lévy, the monkey in the abstract garden (Ovni, 2020, PPPH review), at times Ms. Grimal permits a hint reminiscient of a pop song to make a brief appearance. We thought our ears detected such a moment or two on Hi Birds, but as ornithologists can attest, as soon as we turned our head to focus on it, the creature had flittered out of sight. Back to listening for a new bird!

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