A rusty gate harmonica to vocals crazy paving the interlocking elastics. Loving the wonky symmetry of Orgue Agnès‘s debut LP release A Une Gorge, a perfumery of geometric criss-cross and percussive prowl bristling your bonce.
The first track, “Le Désert Est Une Nonne”, hits you in solid celebration, that violin see-sawing the sublime as an errant funkiness minxes some Mali-esque juvilations. Èlg’s (real name Laurent Gerard half of Opera Mort and one third of Ghédalia Tazartès Reines D’Angleterre) vox gluing things up, leaping the lyrical flirtations that this Belgian/French trio tennis between themselves. It’s an odd mixture, like some seventeenth century shindig, full of west African melodics, flickers of modernity dicing the ingredients out of their genre straight-jackets.
A chemistry that’s right on the money as “L’inalpe” loosens the scaffolding in a slow bleed of vocoder vultures and purring percussion. A noir(ing) itch that scatter-cushions a lovely tensile teeter, mirage mauls as Bedouin violin squirrels the electronics, breaks down down into droney couriers and roosting birds. Contrast seeping “Lou Nin” flips the verve back with its elasticised energy in a bouncy bayonet of a track choked to the rafters with somersaulting rhythmics, fluid-fluxing the narrator’s hysterics before descending into a noisy dustbin lid free for all. “Fume Futur” looks under the bonnet in dubby smears and bent harmonics, punctuated in yelping yerrs and slanty smarts. The keyboards shrieking like a choiring dog toy to explosions of frenetic colour that slip’n’slide on polished lino and silty atonals. Clément, Ernest (of Kaumwald fame) and Laurent are milking something rather rarefied, tinderboxing their talents. The raspy rub of “L’arrivée d’un Chien En Gare De La Ciotat” ransoming you in spiraling psychosis, intoxicated in electronic meooooows, shrieking to some bizarre banterings of thrown notation.A Une Gorge is a strange journey that leaves “Le Gitan Des Dameuses” to return you to the light in slidey trumpet and rumple-stilt-skin jazzhands, its peppercorn purcussives skim-skutterring a rhythmic that has you head-scratching yourself for more.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
