There's something about a clean, pointillistic guitar sound that has always been a magnet to my ears, phrases demarcated by infinitesimal points of sound, each like a motion vector pointing in a new direction. When it comes to representing shapes, a line drawing trumps a smear. Some large chunk of my musical pleasure seems to be about sound shapes in motion. Perhaps that's vacuous, but whatever texture is, something must be its negation. I like to think of it as phrasal clarity. A Wes Montgomery solo is like a rollercoaster ride, every few notes careening around a new corner; the thrill is in the lapses of kinesthetic stability. Just like there's little room for error in where you place the steel guides and bolts that keep the rollercoaster cabs on course, its musical equivalent requires each note to have definite and precise space-time coordinates. Some music is about the individual notes and the way they wiggle and slide, but what I'm talking about here is the syntax of velocity and I wish to celebrate its most extraordinary concretization in the music of Cheval de Frise, a duo of drumkit and amplified acoustic guitar from Bordeaux, France.
If pointillism and clarity is the goal, an acoustic guitar is certainly a logical choice over an electric. The past 40 years of music history has been dramatically dominated by countless attempts to harness the timbral and textural potential of the electric guitar, from Hendrix to Holdsworth to Haino. Its humble acoustic progenitor has by and large been relegated to strum-and-sing music and post-Bach museum music (aka the dead white European male tradition). But wait, what about Derek Bailey and flamenco? What if they were combined? What if it was augmented with post-punk riffing and slashing? Now we're getting a bit closer to what Thomas Bonvalet does with his amplified acoustic guitar in convulsive tandem with Vincent Beysselance's drumkit.
Bonvalet's clean, spiky notes transcend the permutations of pitch, timing, and accent that drive Wes Montgomery, Larry Coryell, Forever Einstein, Ahleuchatistas, Robert Fripp's League of whoever, Philharmonie and other eminent examples of guitar pointillism. The clarity is there; the precision is there, but it's subjected to the most extreme fits of asymmetric lurching I've ever heard in rock music, or perhaps any music for that matter. Cheval de Frise's compositions stand alongside The Stick Men, Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band, Hella, Rich Woodson's Ellipsis, Yowie, and Fred Frith's Massacre (Killing Time) as a pinnacle of a musical phenomenon I like to call herky-jerkiness, a barrage of contrary motions and metrical implosions that play like a soundtrack for an epileptic seizure. For me personally, herky-jerkiness is the holy grail; it's what I live for as a listener and everything else is a supplementary diversion.
Bonvalet's shards and splays of sick picking come in sudden fits and starts, with wide dynamic leaps and split-second accelerations and decelerations. He's perpetually setting up little themes just for the sake of deconstructing or outright obliterating them. The music is clearly heavily rehearsed, permeated with impossible rhythmic unisons and counterpoint. I've simply never heard this level of detail and complexity in non-improvised music before, and sometimes an entire musical thought is conveyed with a single sound, a kind of minimalistically wrought maximalism where multiple phrases are suggested in a split-second, but none are completed. The very first time I listened to Cheval de Frise it was like a dream come true; this is truly music I've fantasized about, as if these two Frenchmen have the same twitches and glitches in their nervous system as me, the barely noticeable muscle spasms beneath the surface of a biological organism's roughly even flow of overlapping cycles in cellular activity.
Repetition plays a major role here; the formula is disorder via order. Beysselance's drumming is clearly rooted in an aggressive math rock style, but he brilliantly achieves the balance of groove and unpredictable accents and sidepaths that characterizes Jim Black and Tom Rainey, and sometimes it's like Bonvalet took a fragment of a Derek Bailey solo and starting riffing on it, trying to make it groove, but preserving the slowness and sparseness. Other times the pair rocks out with loud, high-energy slow riffing in a fairly generic 90s post-punk or math rock style. Perhaps Shellac would be a good point of reference here, but the heaviness is tempered by the simple fact an acoustic guitar is being used with very little in the way of processing. These passages are very brief and serve as powerful foils to the duo's default mode of microscopic, pointillistic, jagged twitching.
Fresques sur les parois secrètes du crâne is the group's second release, a slightly more introspective album than its eponymous predecessor released in 2000. Released originally in France on RuminanCe in 2002, it was also given a US release by San Francisco's Frenetic Records. The title work is a noteworthy anomaly in their oeuvre. Despite being a very busy, active, mid-tempo piece, it foregoes the standard lurching juxtapositions and proceeds with a calm, even, meditative feeling that reaches a poignant conclusion with a delicate, sustained, thin tone for the last minute or so that wouldn't sound out of place in the electroacoustic improv of the current era, Günter Müller or the like. "Phosphorescence de l'arbre mort" is another example of the group expanding their aesthetic into extraordinary new territory, with some tantalizing vocal timbres I'm assuming Bonvalet somehow conjured with his humble instrumentation, a mysterious and elusive composition that defies much of my above attempts to characterize the group.
Because it both equals its predecessor at its best and introduces a wider compositional range, I'd recommend this second album to anyone wishing to consider a role for Cheval de Frise in their life, but to be honest, the first album will also convey their essential aesthetic equally well and my own listening is split fairly evenly between the two. Since discovering this body of work almost one year ago, I've played these discs dozens of times in a state of peaceful rapture—the herky-jerkiness is so subtle and intricate that I'm not compelled to find expression through bodily movement—and like Trout Mask Replica or Yowie's Cryptooology, I'm sure they will be a constant presence in my life till the end, always kept within convenient reach.
~Michael Anton Parker
[Mike] Here are some beautiful thoughts prompted by the above review from Chris Potts in the UK, who posted this elsewhere online today and kindly allowed me to reproduce it for the benefit of Baganauts (sp?) ...
[Chris Potts] Just like to iterate that Cheval DF are indeed a benchmark example of a current group who have (come up with) their own sound and who are great enough for us to reference Don Van Vliet, Etron Fou, free Euro jazz crossed with punk; as parallels or precursors rather than sonic
influences, without in any way undermining the originality of the unique sound world that awaits the new listener. Energy and subtlety, they've grasped the full range of dynamics (within single pieces - from moment to moment often!) and can make full-on onslaught and delicate filigree both count. So many juxtapositions and resolutions in their work (still the essence of fluid tho')- they are simultaneously tightly arranged and free sounding (Henry Cow could also do this....)
Oh, and the drummer is just the BEST.
I agree that "Fresques.." is the best place to start - yep it's more varied, and hints at where they may go next. More non-generic(non- rock/blues) use of a slide on the acoustic??
I'd travel anywhere in the UK to see them if they ever Channel hop again. Excited by the ref' to a new CD.......
Saw them once live in Shitenia and they've been excellent ... Micheal i think the reference you re making bout them are right to the point. Since i haven't listened to their records i could (thru now my distant and foggy recolection) perverely add also bits and pieces of an old fart striking strings in Barcelona ...
Posted by: lukaz at July 5, 2005 12:45 PMI must say that I failed to really emphasize this matter of full range of dynamics... from moment to moment. That is precisely the quality that excites me most about Cheval de Frise, that feeling of a single note popping out in dynamic relief—and in both directions, loud and soft! I find this quite rare, and it's an aesthetic that the serialist composers grasped in theory, but failed to deliver in practice very well. I also hear this kind of microtemporal dynamic variation in Mat Maneri's playing. Gosh, can you imagine Mat playing with Cheval de Frise? I should put that over on our recent "fantasy session" thread! (Though I doubt he'd actually like their music.)
To anyone who says "complexity? you call that complexity?" about Cheval, I say look at the use of dynamics, truly a bogglingly dense informational stratum if there ever was one.
Sheesh, I should've also listed Etron Fou in my little short list of herky-jerky holy grails above. My obsessive love for Ferdinand Richard and his mates nearly rivals anything. And of course there is that acoustic guitar section opening the epochal, unapproachable "L'amulette et le petit Rabbin" from Batelages, though it's rather conventional compared to Bonvalet.
It would be great if Cheval added two vocalists, one who could do that French howl like on "L'amulette..." and another from Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan. And hell, while we're at it, get Mat Maneri in there for sure! I think I will unplug my stereo and just listen to this quintet in my mind for the next few weeks...
Posted by: Michael Anton Parker at July 5, 2005 1:10 PM[Lukaz] ...bits and pieces of an old fart striking strings in Barcelona ...
[Mike] Ah, Lukaz, I didn't know you dabbled in poetry! I'm rather savoring the confusion of several interpretations competing for my attention here!
Michael, I'll forward this thread to my pal Bruno Meillier (ex Etron Fou of course), who, in his capacity as co-director of Orkhestra - distribution and label - reissued Ferdinard's two early albums En Avant En Forme. Or maybe you already have them? Send me an individual mail with your address DWarbur928@aol.com
Still ZIMDHUMN? Time for a change..
Posted by: Dan Warburton at July 5, 2005 10:07 PMLet Mr. Meillier know he's got a big fan in Pennsylvania! One thing I'd like to hear is his work with Dominique Lentin, the existence of which Google has led me to believe in. In the US it's very difficult to be informed about more obscure post-RIO activity in Europe. I dig Lentin's work quite a bit, Les Philosophes, Zou, and, most of all that priceless treasure of a disc he made with Takumi Fukushima, which I make a point of mentioning here because for this "record of the week" I almost did a little write-up on that Lentin/Fukushima duo disc instead. Maybe sometime in the future.
Actually, I do have that En Avant, En Forme! CD. In fact, I just played it a few months ago so it's fresh in my mind, not in the same ballpark as the mighty Etrons, but awfully fun and charming. Pretty bizarre lyrics! "Mister White Goes Hunting"—that one kills me!
So Dan, since you live in France, what's your take on Cheval de Frise? Does their name travel in the same circles as the improv avant-garde or is it a separate underground rock culture phenomenon? I wonder if they are known or cherished by the older generation of RIO types?
Unfortunately, Cheval had split recently.
Just as I read, Thomas is now colaborating with a band called Radikal Satan, and Vincent is focused on finishing his studies. At least they left us with a farewell 5-song EP called La Lame Du Mat, which is totally worth search for (awesome as all of their previous stuff). Sorry for bring the bad news here.
So, Long Live Cheval then!
Posted by: karl at July 5, 2005 11:16 PMBruno's work with Dominique Lentin is featured on his SMI label. There are three references at
http://ornitoto.free.fr/smi3.htm For Cheval, I'm ashamed to admit I don't know their work, only the name. Another hole in the education.
I saw their gig at the festival in st etienne in may
I was playing there with.... oh, anyway
and, i really liked their set
they didnt play on stage
in front of each other
no amplification for the drummer, he really is so LOUD already
in fact he just doesnt need any
and then guitarist is sitting with all his effects boxes
and there is 2 amps behind the drummer and two behind the guitarist
pfffff, GIRLS WERE SHOUTING HYSTERICAL
it was really good, i never talk to this guys though; obviously we're somehow CLOSE, anyway
NEVER listened to their records
its on RUMINANCE NO?
DAN is it Fred d'hérouville from Gordz who does this label
also GORDZ is really good stuff for me
i didnt listened to their second album....
pffff bla bla
pleasure to write here
more
A
I really enjoyed this review, Michael (and I feel the same way about herky-jerk).
Posted by: walto at July 8, 2005 8:29 PMHey Alexandre:
Are you sure you're not referring to Chevreuil, instead of Cheval? They're also a guitar/drums duo, only more rockier and agressive-sounding. By your description, it totally sounds like them. I think Cheval never played with more than one amp on their setup, and that's exactly the thing with Chevreuil: one guitar running through several amplifiers for maximized impact. Plus, theoretically they were no longer active by May.
Could you clarify this?
PS: Gordz are very cool, indeed.
Karl and Alexandre
Yes it was Chevreuil
Check here :
http://ornitoto.free.fr/prog_2005.htm#s
Posted by: Jacques Oger at July 10, 2005 3:51 AMAhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! Mazette!!!! YES MISTAKE
thats REALLY me this
so i will KNOW NOW
its CHEVREUIL
MERCI
btw i saw cheval de frise long time ago in Paris
maybe i made SECOND MISTAKE
but do they STILL EXIST cheval de frise
bye
Alexandre
Well, I suppose it was a true pleasure to believe that girls were shouting hysterically in response to Cheval de Frise, but in truth that should've been enough to alert us to Alexandre's mistake!
lay off da cheeba, Belly Boy :)
Posted by: Dan Warburton at July 10, 2005 10:45 AMAppears that Cheval guitarist Thomas Bonvalet has a new solo project called L'ocelle Mare and he's touring the US in late January as an opening act for popular avant-rock group Deerhoof (whose records are excellent on the whole). I located a webpage with sample clips of this solo acoustic guitar stuff. Certainly a Cheval flavor retained.
Posted by: Michael Anton Parker at December 18, 2005 1:57 PM.................................................. © 2003 - 2006 bagatellen ..................................................