05/17/2017
Trio Forj, Rue du chat qui danse, 2017
In January 2017 the group FORJ released its first album, Rue du chat qui danse (Street of the Dancing Cat). Trio Forj is a little unusual in that they specialize in the dance music of Upper or eastern Brittany, where the indigenous language is not Breton but Gallo. While a few other bands have a Gallo slant, notably the Hamon-Martin quintet, their material is broadly based and incorporates the bombard (with the incredibly talented Erwan Hamon), giving the overall sound a more typical ‘Breton’ feel.
FORJ was created in 2014 by three musicians from Rennes: Clément Le Goff on vocals, Kenan Guernalec on wooden flute and Alan Valee on 12-string acoustic guitar. The material on this recording is quite strong. Standout tracks include the opening Rond de Loudéac suite and the closing Ridée 6 temps. Throughout, Guernalec’s flute playing is outstanding, with lovely lines and a warm, reedy tone. This is not especially surprising given the rock-solid work on his solo flute album of a few years ago. As an aside, he also, somewhat oddly given his flute skills, plays electric keyboard in the Irish/Breton band Zonk, deferring to Ronan Le Dissez for the flute role.
Alan Velee is the revelation of this recording with his outstanding 12-string guitar work. While the octave mandolin/bouzouki/cittern is a fairly common instrument in the various flavors of western European folk music, I have long wondered why the 12-string guitar was never used to fill in this role. It is used here and to incredible effect. Valee is just great - great melodies, great chords, great sound. Last and perhaps least is Clément Le Goff’s vocals. Le Goff has a strong baritone and sings in the rather straightforward, unornamented style found in Gallo singing. Most of what he does is quite good, but he does have an unfortunate tendency to ebb in abdominal support towards the end of longer phrases, in which case his vocals fall noticeably flat and more collapse than come to a graceful end. All in all, though, it’s still pretty good and hence here I am writing about it.
-Fañch
