Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Speed Queen: Moments Imaginaires

Speed Queen: Moments Imaginaires

Item: Moments Imaginaires
Rating: 0
Author: AAJ Staff

By AAJ Staff
July 11, 2002
View read count

Straddling genres can be a difficult task. It's not difficult to make great music, mind you, but it can be very difficult to find an audience for that music. sq, aka Speed Queen, is an improvising duo. But instead of drawing from clear roots in the jazz or euro scene, the duo uses sound textures more common in noise and electronic bands. Interestingly, sq doesn’t fall into many of those genre traps either. Credit Speed Queens Marc Faris and Joe Tunis for having the wits to come up with their own path.

The eight tracks are varied, not at all programmatic, yet one can make narrative associations with many. Even their titles are atypical; jazzers tend to short titles, and the laptoppers seem to prefer abbreviations. The first track here is “:thank you k for space harmonics body hearING, NG, NGNGNG:” The percussion rattles, and speeds up like a train; then there’s a switch, a shift.

In a sense this is pure music: It’s often difficult to tell which instruments are playing. John Cage would probably approve. Percussion and guitar, surely. Bowed bass? There are major shifts in dynamic range, then silences where you think the disc may have ended. Imagine Captain Beefheart’s “Kandy Korn” or “Mirror Man” horn squawks, but with no rhythm track at all.

For more information, visit Carbon Records on the web.

Personnel

Speed Queen

Album information

Title: Moments Imaginaires | Year Released: 2002 | Record Label: Carbon 7

About Speed Queen

PREVIOUS / NEXT

Delirium
< Previous

Red Clay
Next >

Become a Sustaining Member

Since 1995, All About Jazz has championed jazz as an art form and supported the musicians who create it. Over three decades, it has grown into one of the world's leading jazz resources, serving hundreds of thousands of readers, musicians, presenters and industry professionals each month.

Help Build the Future of All About Jazz

Your support helps us continue building All About Jazz for the next generation—expanding our editorial coverage, preserving jazz history, developing new community features and creating better ways to discover the music and the people behind it.

Become a sustaining member for as little as $20 per year and you'll immediately enjoy an ad-free experience along with access to subscriber features and future articles for a full year.

Together, we're not simply sustaining All About Jazz—we're building its future. Thank you for being part of the journey.