Lazro/Zingaro/Leandre/Lovens - Madly You

Lazro/Zingaro/Leandre/Lovens
Madly You
Potlatch

The openings to each of the two performances on Madly You, which were recorded live at the Banliues Bleues Festival in March of 2001, are promising. The 40-minute title tune and its 20-minute companion, “Lyou Mad” both start with tonal (if not exactly narrative) investigations of string or horn harmonics. Daunik Lazro’s buttery mobius strips on alto (on 1) and baritone (on 2) are beguiling, and his companions, violinist Carlos Zingaro and bassist Joelle Leandre provide a capacious and comfy bed for his tossing and turning. Paul Lovens seems to have had a complete Revereware arsenal with him that day in Paris, and his clangy, stylized solo about twelve minutes into “Madly You” keeps things interesting for a while longer. Unfortunately, the tune meanders on and off the track after that, occasionally venturing into nowheresville. There are some terrific bits (I’m thinking particularly of some Zingaro solo double-stopped tremolos and, later, a batch of Leandre samurai vocalizing to a slam-bang Stockhausen-style accompaniment. But the tune suffers not only from its excessive length, but from too much accessorizing by way of drones. Both Leandre and Zingaro bear responsibility—they often succumb to the easy gambit of filling in blank spaces (which might have been nice) with endless long tones, particularly double-stopped fifths. Where to be “avant-garde” is largely a function of replacing tunes that might have had number of different chords with tunes that use no more than a single one, it’s often more of a step backward than an advance into the unknown. The companion cut, “Lyou Mad,” also deteriorates after its psychedelic, Evan-Parker-in-slo-mo start. Again, any number of cool sections are almost redemptive, but one wonders why there were so many false starts and abandoned forays on this recording. Potential whirlwinds die out; what could have been interesting discussions fizzle into the recitation of platitudes. Perhaps it was the open-ended nature of the gig that was responsible for an outing that isn’t up to what I’ve come to expect from these four highly talented musicians. Over the past decade, Leandre has investigated shorter, more focussed improvisational forms to very good effect: such a focus would doubtless have helped matters here. Those non-completists who are interested in a better recent example of this bassist/improvisor’s notable talents should pick up her terrific Out of Sound (with Newton and Leimgruber) and leave Madly You alone.