Music Reviews…

07/11/2024

Ivarh, Huñvre, Paker Prod, 2023

Ivarh, Huñvre, Paker Prod, 2023

https://www.pakerprod.bzh/album/ivarh-hunvre/

Personnel:

Elouan LE SAUZE - vocals

Pablo MOLARD - acoustic guitar and effects

Ewen COURIAUT - saxophones

Benjamin BESSÉ - 12-string electric guitar and analog synthesizer

Thomas BESSÉ - percussion and drums

Invité:

Hélène LABARRIÈRE - double bass

Here is a group somewhat unlike anything I’ve heard before. Huñvre means “dream” in Breton and this is a well-chosen name for their first full-length recording, which carries a distinctly surreal, dream-like quality across a program that could possibly be referred to as ‘folk rock’. That categorization might be somewhat deceptive, however. Huñvre has little in common with definitive acts of yesteryear such as Steeleye Span or, closer to home, the 70s efforts of Alan Stivell with his emphatic rock sounds frankensteined onto traditional material. 

Ivarh is the Breton name for a ‘hollow’ or rustic rural path traced between two hedges: a ribbon of land where travelers cross, meet, leave and return. The marketing suggests a lot of excitement around the concept of paths meeting, crossing; perhaps there is some mist, with people, sounds, and ideas from different places and times mysteriously meeting… you get the idea. 

The quintet’s music is light, soaring, dreamlike; a dynamic, fully contemporary and singular sound nonetheless deeply rooted in the traditions of central Brittany and Pays Vannetais, from where Le Sauze, a native of Lorient, primarily draws his inspiration. The bulk of the material is traditional. Huñvre seamlessly melds folk – Pablo Molard’s exquisite acoustic guitar introduces many pieces – and sophisticated electronic textures coming from Benjamin Bessé’s electric 12-string guitar and analog synthesizer. Besse’s sounds are diverse and complex, sometimes drawing on Eno-esque ambience but then also producing intriguingly complex electronic melodic riffs.The resulting material is more akin to Dead Can Dance than to Fairport Convention, although the 90s group Dibenn might provide a better comparison than either.

Pablo Molard, a scion of the legendary Molard family, is responsible for much of the arrangement as well as the composition of the album’s original material, while Le Sauze composed some of the lyrics. Le Sauze has a wonderfully haunting voice, vibrant and melancholy, full-voiced yet tinged with more than a hint of the archetypal Breton vibrato. Unlike the most typical kan-ha-diskan scenario, there is no second vocalist. Instead, the call-and-response aspect is handled by the panoply of talented instrumentalists. The most notable instrument in terms of melody is Ewen Couriaut's saxophone. This guy can really play. While Timothy Le Bour has become a nearly ubiquitous presence wherever saxophone is called for in the Breton genre, to my surprise I think I prefer Couriaut’s tone here to that found on the new Le Bour-Bodros recording— deep, meaty, incisive and with a distinctive character giving it great presence in the mix. 

The excellent percussion of Thomas Bessé provides rhythmic backbone to the band’s dense arrangements. Although I didn’t feel like the sound was lacking, I was still a bit surprised to see an empty space where a bass player would go, except for guest player Hélène Labarièrre on track 6, Lârit Din. Generally speaking, Huñvre is a successful recording. There is one glaring flaw, however, which is in the production.

Invoking the apt metaphor, I feel like we are a bit like a broken record in calling out the frequent production fails in modern recording efforts. This is almost always because with modern technology and the implosion of the recording industry due to the dominance of streaming services, many recordings are much more DIY efforts than in the past. The strange thing about the production is that in many regards it is excellent. There is ample potential for a murky soundstage with all the instruments going - as I said earlier, dense arrangements, but that is not the problem. Pablo Molard’s excellent guitar playing is near the front of the mix, and the other instruments are not far behind and together they really fill one’s headphones in a highly detailed fashion. The problem is with the vocals. Perhaps in the cause of creating a more ‘dreamy’ sound, Le Sauze’s vocals have the reverb turned way up, so that he sounds like he is singing in a cavern while the rest of the group is in a smallish room. He is also mixed back, an odd choice for a lead vocal. I am guessing that all you would have to do is turn the reverb dial in the DAW about 75% down on the lead vocal, and perhaps bring him up in the mix by just a db or two, and the problem would be completely solved. This problem is not super-noticeable in a cheap stereo or tinny earbuds, but it sounds quite odd on a decent stereo or headphones.

To be sure, this does not ruin the recording, but it bumps it down from what could have been really exceptional to just a good recording. However, it is still pretty cool; you just have to overlook the echoey effect laid ham-fistedly over the vocals.

~ Fañch

Sylvain Leroy, La Recherche - Propositions d’un sonneur de biniou, Coop Breizh, 2024

Sylvain Leroy/La Recherche - Propositions d’un sonneur de biniou/Coop Breizh/2024

Personnel:

Sylvain Leroy : binious

Invités:

Jorj Botuha - bombard

Alain Pennec - accordeon

Erwan Hamon - bombard

Matthieu Riopel  - bombard

Mathieu Sérot - bombard 

Rozenn Talec -vocals 

Mathieu Hamon - vocals 

Alain “Benny” Naël - vocals

Jean-Yves Le Bot - drums 

Alex Tual - percussion

Yannig Noguet - accordeon

Below is an article that we did not write but did liberally translate from the French original. It was written by Gwenaël Merret for a local publication in the Redon Area - the original article is also presented to the right - click on it to (slightly) enlarge. With particular interest in the “binaural” and “spatialized” sound aspect, after a certain of our reviewers finally gets a decent set of headphones we’ll add our own collective thoughts about the recording to the article, at the bottom, making this a hybrid of article and review.

Binioist Sylvain Leroy is organizing an instrumental and singing aperitif on Saturday May 25 at Danett, in Redon, as well as workshops to discover spatialized sound on the occasion of the release of his new CD.

“My album is the first recording of traditional music in binaural sound!“, smiles Sylvain Leroy, as he signs a copy of La Recherche - Propositions d’un sonneur de biniou (Research, proposals from a biniou player). A biniou CD? This brash instrument, always in the background, which plays an octave higher than the others? Sylvain Leroy dared to do it and he did it in a very good way. To experience the results of his research, he is organizing an aperitif at Danett Music, at 51, rue de la Châtaigneraie in Redon, an apéro sonné on Saturday May 25, 2024 from 11 a.m. The curious can also participate in a workshop to discover spatialized sound, as recorded on a good part of the album by sound engineer Jasmine Scheuermann.

A superb cast

“I might not have made this record without meeting them,” explains the modest native of Saint-Pern in Ille-et-Vilaine, who has lived in Allaire for years. He invited his usual playing partners to accompany him on this musical adventure. After 30 years of biniou he has accumulated a veritable ‘who’s who’ of Breton music: musician and instrument maker Jorj Botuha, the modest and brilliant accordionist and talabarder (bombard player) Alain Pennec, the very talented talabarder Erwan Hamon (from Hamon Martin Quintet), Matthieu Riopel and Mathieu Sérot, singers Rozenn Talec, Mathieu Hamon, Alain “Benny” Naël, drummerJean-Yves Le Bot, percussionist Alex Tual and accordionist Yannig Noguet . The diverse array of superb accompanists who took part in this recording is a sign of the value of the star!

Leroy plays mainly on instruments created by Tudual Hervieux. (tudual-hervieux.com, formerly Hervieux-Glet)

Listening with headphones is essential. The biniou here plays with subtlety and expressiveness, with a richness and freedom that Scottish bagpipe band players do not have because all the ornamentations are rigidly codified, referenced and named.

The art of transmission

“I had the chance to learn from very caring musicians, who were always happy to pass on their know-how to kids like me.” It must be said that 30 years ago, young people with eyes sparkling for the biniou were not that common in the streets! Sylvain Leroy chose the locale of Quimper for his initial studies due to logistics and transport: a hive of bagadou orchestras and traditional musicians including the charismatic Erwan Ropars, who passed in 2015 after leaving his mark on generations of musicians. Then to Lorient, the Mecca of Celtic music, for solid experience.

“Now it’s my turn to teach, and I do it with joy,” beams a man whose daily regimen finds him playing every morning “in my bunker set up in the garage”. Leroy became a Fest Noz musician in the hot and flourishing 1990-2000 era, "where we were asked to play the following week as soon as we got off stage”.  Placing 3rd in the annual national championship at Gourin, with Erwan Hamon, and the winner of the Bogue d'Or competition in 2023, Leroy took care to vary the program on Recherche, all rooted in his preferred Vannes-Gallo regional repertoire.

The instrumental tracks were recorded outdoors in natural environments, letting the opening notes, before the articulation of the melody, respond to the chirping of the birds, the vibration of the reeds respond to the wind in the trees. The uncontrollable aspects of the live take were preferred over the more sterile search for perfection in the studio, which always risks blandness. How could one sound bland when playing “mod kozh” (old-style) instruments made by Jorj Botuha, copies of very old instruments with untempered scales that capture the ear and draw us back centuries, to distant settings?

Lettres de noblesse?

Frequently just the accompaniment, has the biniou now earned the right to be the main voice? On this recording, whether the partner is Mathieu Hamon, Rozenn Tallec, Jean-Yves Le Bot or Benny Naël - it works! From smiles to tears, Recherche also bring old songs back out of oblivion that deserve to continue to exist.

Sylvain Leroy has created a fully successful recording with La Recherche, proposition d’un sonneur de biniou. Like the beautiful sepia-toned cover photo signed by Tudual Hervieux, Recherche invites you to settle down and really listen, not to just gloss over as you would when scroll images on social media, and to let yourself be captivated by its primitive and buzzing vibration. Without a doubt, the completely solo biniou pieces which open, punctuate, and close the album are also worthy of a good listen! Sylvain Leroy gives this much-maligned instrument its ‘lettres de noblesse’.

To purchase the CD: https://www.coop-breizh.fr/11729-cd-sylvain-leroy-la-recherche-3760061305212.html

Gallo-vannetaise melody, with Mathieu Riopel (bombard) and Sylvain Leroy (biniou) at Gourin in 2022

03/20/2024

Rozenn Le Trionnaire & Jérémy Simon Skeud (Reflet), Coop Breizh, 2024

Bro Dreger VII Dans Kernev - Gavotte/Diffusion Breizh/1995

Here’s a real treat: the exquisite seventh recording of the Bro Dreger (Tregor region) series of recordings produced by the Kreizenn Sevenadurel Lannuon organization. KSL has continually produced low fanfare yet beautifully done recordings in this ongoing series, or rather two series, for years. This recording is part of the Collection Bro Dreger series, of which there are 15 numbered anthology recordings, each with a particular emphasis such as instruments, area, dance type, etc. KSL also has a second series, Collection Tud Bro Dreger, which are not numbered and represent the work of a single artist or group. The most recent of these was released in 2023, Etrezek an aber sall by  Gildas Moal & René Chaplain, which we will examine in the near future.

Bro Dreger VII was released in 1995. This anthology features a broad variety of pairs of musicians (and a trio), each playing a three-track gavotte suite. The combinations include bombard and biniou, bombard and accordion, flute and guitar, singers, and clarinets. It’s a wonderfully done recording with straight-ahead performances of top-notch players, many of them quite famous, captured with a warm sound and zero artifice or studio tricks. It’s great. I first purchased a cassette of this in Brittany and drove around the country with it playing in my crummy little rental car. I spent some time with Jamie McMenemy of Kornog etc fame, and he excitedly told me “I did the cover art for that one!” Sure enough, check out the signature on the cover art. 

This recording is extremely Breton sounding. Don’t know what that means? That’s too bad, because it’s not available… or is it? This is where the real treat I mentioned at the start of this article comes in. Because it’s out of print, KSL makes it available on their website as mp3 tracks. You can either play them as pictured in the mp3 player screen shot to the right, or you can use some simple mouse actions to first, select a track  and right-click to ‘Open Link in New Tab’ and then on the new tab, right-click again and ‘Save Audio As’.  If you click on the music player image to the right it will open a new browser tab and take you right to the real thing. Notice at the top of the image it says ’Pour le livret, c’est ici’. That’s the link to download the very cool booklet.

~Fañch