05/22/2023
Toutã/Hybride/Paker Productions/2023
Personnel:
Tibo Niobé: guitar
Gabriel Faure : violin & tenor guitar
Yeltaz Guenneau : pipes, flute & duduk
Kentin Juillard & Jérôme Kerihuel : percussion
Erwan Volant : bass
Paker Produuctions, which poot forth this recording, as Frank Zappa would say, makes these claims about Hybride: “Formed around the compositions of guitarist Tibo Niobé, Toutã ( the tribe ) is a heterogeneous mixture of universes gleaned over the course of his various experiences and musical encounters. A solid rhythm section, a formidable telluric bass, fiddle and flutes in total symbiosis, sometimes sharp sometimes caressing guitars form this powerful hybrid of groove, trad and many other influences.”
The album also has testimonials, though they are difficult to read because of poor graphics decisions, from luminaries as bright as Soïg Siberil and Dan Ar Bras no less, so ‘woah’. So what is going on here?
Not much. This album hit the brand new Yamaha CD player with some expectation. I’ve seen Niobe play and I know that he is quite good. What came out of the speakers, though, was all-instrumental rock music, with some mild prog-rock here and there, some folkiness here and there, some Celtic (and by Celtic I mean Irish and Scottish, not Breton, which is super weird), some mild mid-east/world sounds on a couple of tracks… This sounds like a rock band from anywhere USA with some nods to world music. I could not detect a single bit of actual Breton influence in this recording. Why do nominally Celtic/rock hybrid projects inevitably fail so miserably? Two great tastes that don’t taste great together? This makes me think back to the early 90s recording ‘Den’ which drew on members of Pennou Skoulm for a jazz/rock/Breton sound which, while still not ultimately successful, was vastly more interesting than this recording.
These are all established, talented musicians well known in the Fest Noz milieu, and on this release they show that they can all move their hands over the strings in complicated patterns in strict tempo – you know, they can play. All in all though, this music is not moving and is no more Breton than any other rock band and is way less interesting than countless numbers of them. Yes, there is another great genre of music, rock music, with endless numbers of intensely creative, freaky musicians doing really wild stuff, all the time, all over the world.
Despite the gloss, the hype, the pedigreed lineup, this is just not a good album. Perhaps if these guys did not market themselves in the trad context I would not harsh out on them… but they did. Back to the drawing board, boys. Write some tunes with some soul next time. Maybe try playing some more Breton-style music, one of the world’s great musical genres that is literally right on your doorstep.
-Fañch
