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Le buffet

Hugo Blouin

Label: Ambiances Magnétiques
Released: 2025
Duration: 00:53:15
Views: 16

Tracks

Soupe pragmatique; La patate au sucre; Plantée de chemin; Après tu manges; Un art du temps; La sauce; Pain-beurre- chocolat; Du jazz sérieux; Le baril géant; Un camion pizza

Personnel

Album Description

Hugo Blouin's fourth album Le buffet delights in sheer gourmet jazz eccentricity. The Montréal bassist and composer is no stranger to working in the concept-album framework while delving into the inherent musicality of Québécois French language, having previously treated topics such as hockey and the Charbonneau Commission on corruption in Québec on his past award-winning outings.

Here, armed with food as his subject, Blouin gets playful but also personal, employing actual recipes collected from his friends as well as interviews with them, building a layer of mealtime banter into the angular grooves he unfurls. Amidst the agile vocal lines and intricate compositional structures, listeners are served various delicious sides — anecdotes, hot takes, and refections — that imbue the record's imaginative virtuosity with a jovial levity. Blouin's vibrant, mischievous work presents a unique vision of musique actuelle, a collision of urgent post-bop swing, cheeky prog-like rhythms and structural detours, poised balladry, freeform outbursts and a dash of the speech-contoured melodies trail-blazed on René Lussier's 1989 Le trésor de la langue.

The band he has assembled forLe buffet would no doubt garner a Michelin Star if it were transposed to the culinary realm. Blouin is fanked here by six-time Grammy nominee John Hollenbeck on drums, Aurélien Tomasi (of Eyevin and Togetherness!) on wind instruments, Marianne Trudel on piano (2024 OPUS Award winner for Jazz Album of the Year and Composer of the Year) as well as vocalist Eugénie Jobin (AKA Ambroise, and member of Isaiah Ceccarelli's House of Gold (of Norwegian imprint Sofa)). This core ensemble is bolstered by a cast of illustrious guests including Alissa Cheung (Quatuor Bozzini) on violin, Émilie Fortin on trumpet, and Marion Rampal on vocals (collaborator to Archie Shepp, and Best Vocal Artist at the 2022 Victoires du jazz in France).

Hugo Blouin also collaborates with Rampal and Tomasi in the inventive group Petite Maison, an outft that merges curious-eared jazz approaches with the rich folk traditions. He is also a member of the visionary guitarist/composer René Lussier's trio with drummer Robbie Kuster and L'abîme, alongside leader Jonathan Turgeon, plus Alex Dodier, JP Godbout, and Gabriel Genest.

Blouin is a decidedly eclectic artist, working within jazz, folk, song, sound-art, and with poetry. He has released three albums, includingCharbonneau ou les valeurs à' bonne place, volume 1, (winner of OPUS prize 2019 and GAMIQ 2018), and his hockey homageSport national(2023), which traces a dizzying and nuanced continuum from Maurice Richard to Marie-Philip Poulin. The release concert ranked among the Sors-tu's best concerts of the year, while also being included in PAN M 360's albums of the year. He also works with the Christine Tassan Quintet, the Calgaréal collective, Marc Maziade's Horizons, singer-songwriter France Bernard, and composed and played in Véronique Bachand's poetry performance,Avec le rire de ma grand-mère. He has contributed to some thirty albums as a performer, composer, and producer. For years, while touring with the groups MAZ and Brasser Brassens, he showcased his work in the United States, Mexico, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Poland, and Ghana.

Album uploaded by Hugo Blouin