Yves Bouliane – Champ (10 Opérations)

The Tenzier imprint, founded five years ago to bring to light sonic gems from the fertile yet under-appreciated Quebec avant-garde, is back with its fifth release. Similar to the label’s earlier missives, this exploration of the work of free improviser and composer Yves Bouliane arrives in a stark, monochrome sleeve. Yet whereas previous albums from the label paired sonic pioneers with contemporary visual artists, Champ (10 Opérations) finds the artist himself providing the visual accompaniment. In this case, we are presented with tiled pieces of sheet music with black pseudo-geometric designs obfuscating the scores (fittingly titled “Encre sur Partitions” or “Ink on Scores” and created by Bouliane in 2010). The artwork itself provides a glimpse into the imagery-filled nature of the composition itself, which was originally released in a sparse edition of 10 audio cassettes in 1977.

Bouliane was an active improviser in the early 1970s Quebec avant-garde, playing with other active members of the scene in a variety of duo or trio formats, before establishing Montreal’s Experimental Music Workshop with Robert Lepage, Raymond Gervais and Michel Di Torre. In 1977, he composed Champ (10 Interventions) and Champ (10 Opérations), the latter of which is for solo cello, and is a mesmerizing exercise in hyper-kinetic, extended technique. It’s a whirlwind of a piece that finds Bouliane wrenching an extreme palette of sounds from his manhandled instrument. For over thirty minutes, the artist plucks, bows, scrapes, palms and hammers the cello in an unrelenting torrent of sound that is at once intriguing and jarring. The first 54 copies of this LP reissue arrive accompanied by a cassette — entitled À Propos (de) — courtesy of the Los Discos Enfantasmes crew. Dressed to appear as the original 1977 edition of the Bouliane tape, this artifact contains two homages to the original piece, one performed by Jean-Sébastien Truchy and the other by Alexandre St-Onge. It appears that St-Onge employs a guitar in interpreting the work, while Truchy layers bowed strings (and perhaps snippets of Bouliane’s recording) in a more enigmatic mode of sound production.

Drop by the Tenzier website to explore their collection of Quebecois wonders and snap up a copy of this stellar set of sounds.