11/08/2008
Wipidoup, L'Opium du danseur, Bemol Productions, 2008
This recording has been selected as the 2008 All Things Breton Album of the Year!
Personnel:
- Régis Huiban – Chromatic accordion
- Gildas Le Buhé – Vocals, tenor saxophone
- Pierrick Tardivel – Bass, ngoni
L'Opium du danseur (Opium of the Dancer), the first release by the group Wipidoup, is an intensely compelling recording. The unique sound packs an enormous whallop, elegantly imbuing Breton dance music with a somewhat surreal, hypnotic aesthetic uniquely its own. Gildas Le Buhé (Tenor saxophone and vocals) Régis Huiban (chromatic accordion) and Pierrick Tardivel (double bass, ngoni) effortlessly infuse traditional Breton dance-tune forms and melodic structures with complex harmonies and jazz swing from the early 20th century, creating an addictive, virtuosic, and distinctive soundscape. This is an incredible recording from a new band that truly sounds like no other.
In the Vannetais dialect of Breton, Wipidoup translates as “double poison” claims singer and saxophonist Gildas Le Buhé in a brief article in Le Telegramme, who got the expression from his grandmother. Besides the unusual sound of the name, “The idea that our trio is a psychotropic substance that makes the dancers enter a trance pleases us very much," says bassist Pierrick Tardivel. Tardivel, a veteran of groups such as Darhaou and Kej, brings a profoundly deep, swinging sensibility to his double bass that fits perfectly into the band’s sound. He occasionally supplements the bass with the ngoni, an African stringed instrument or harp that can produce rapid and repetitive melodic phrases for a hypnotic effect.
This is a genre-changing recording, channeling the exquisite touch and sensitivity accordionist Huiban developed in his Kof Ha Kof duo with woodwind maestro and madman Roland Becker into airy, swinging, and mysterious takes on traditional sounds. Tightly interwoven melody lines featuring the accordion, typically playing in the upper register, and the deeper tonality of the tenor sax playing repeated motifs, are supported by dense bass lines. The melodies are both surprising and memorable, the playing is superb, the pulse is mesmerizing, and the arrangements have trancelike beauty. It’s a heady cocktail of a listening experience. The heady vibe is perfectly captured and amplified by superb graphics by Breton artist Christelle Le Guen. Le Guen’s evocative color illustration of a puppet happily dancing on strings, like a lighthearted yet slightly creepy children’s book illustration, instills a complex reaction in perfect sync with the band’s ‘psychotropic’ identity.
Although hilariously odd track names like Cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse), Diableries (deviltry), Danse de l'extase (Dance of Ecstasy) Troublant phenomene (Troubling phenomenon), and Les tisanes du crepuscule (Literally, the herbal teas of twilight, but in meaning, the elixirs of twilight) might suggest a more challenging atmosphere, the music is instead vibrant and mischievous. The listening experience is as warm and honest as Gildas Le Buhé’s appealing tenor - whether it be his voice or saxophone.
L'Opium du danseur is a crazy-good recording. It also notes a significant shift away from the earlier ‘Celtic’ ( by which I mean Irish, Scottish, etc) influenced era of bands to an aesthetic that draws more from sounds native to Brittany, particularly the chromatic accordion tradition and the jazz-influenced dance hall scene from the first half of the twentieth century. If you like Breton music, this is absolutely a must-have recording.
- Fañch
