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Anti-Rubber Brain Factory & Sameer Gupta
This episode features two extremely original albums from France, and they couldn't be more different. Guitarist Marc Ducret tackles Shakespeare on his Lady M. He's not the first to look to the Bard of Avon for inspiration (Duke Ellington and Cleo Laine come to mind immediately), but he may be the first one to frame one of Lady MacBeth's soliloquy's with such hard-nosed guitar. The other recording is from the eclectic, always “what's next?," Anti-Rubber Brain Factory led by bassist ...
read moreMarc Ducret - Joëlle Léandre: Chez Hélène
The audience in attendance at the 19PaulFort venue in Paris, France must have been spellbound after witnessing these prolific and highly influential improvisers wield their magic. As leaders and collaborators bassist Joëlle Léandre and guitarist Marc Ducret have pretty much done it all over the years, evidenced by their extensive discographies. Here, the bassist is a galvanized catalyst via her fervent and precise strumming and impossibly fast bowing patterns as Ducret is often the colorist as they counterbalance each other ...
read moreMarc Ducret: Tower vol. 3
Each one of French guitarist Marc Ducret's Tower series albums has featured different lineups and instrumentation. With Tower vol. 3, he employs a three-man trombone attack with percussion and piano performers; as stated in the album liners, the band “plays comments on the music already played." Therefore, the musicians redevelop and dissect previous works appearing on the first two volumes. At times polytonal via the divergent instrumentation mix, the trombonists' powerful choruses supply interesting contrasts as the band takes on ...
read moreMarc Ducret: Tower, Vol. 3
French guitarist Marc Ducret's new sextet, known also as the Real Thing #3 band, was supposed to mark the end of his Tower cycle of compositions, now spread over four discs and at least five projects: a solo guitar, quartet, quintet and the as-yet- unrecorded 12-member Tower-Bridge orchestra. This project was initiated by Ducret in 2008 as an attempt to mirror a musical texture to a chapter from writer Vladimir Nabokov's “Ada," in which he weaves a whole labyrinth made ...
read moreMarc Ducret: Tower, Vol. 4
When French guitarist Marc Ducret began to plan his Tower book of works-- Vol. 1 (2010) for a Franco-Danish quintet and Vol. 2 (2011) for a Franco-American quartet (both on Ayler)-- he thought to transpose to his musical world a literary device that writer Vladimir Nabokov used in his 1969 book Ada. In this book, Nabokov weaves a whole labyrinth made of mirrors, memories and correspondences, eventually building a form which in turn leads to his other books, themes and ...
read moreMarc Ducret: Helsinki, Finland, January 29, 2012
Marc Ducret SoloMalmintaloHelsinki, FinlandJaunary 29, 2012 A solo performance is by definition an intense experience, and when the musician is committed to a style which is itself close to impenetrable the result can be bewildering; in this case a performance is bound only by the resourcefulness of the audience. Those attending this penultimate concert of French guitarist Marc Ducret's Finnish tour almost certainly knew what to expect. With the assistance of ...
read moreMarc Ducret: Tower, Vol. 2
Marc Ducret is among the elite group of modern era guitarists who make a significant imprint on roads previously navigated, with a penchant for exploring bewildering musical vistas. His unique instrumental voice has been a source of wonderment for several decades. On his follow-up to Tower Vol. 1 (Ayler, 2011), featuring a horns-based quintet, Ducret realigns with longtime comrades and influential musicians in their own right--alto saxophonist Tim Berne and drummer Tom Rainey--for a bass-less quartet. Moreover, violinist Dominique Pifarely's ...
read moreMarc Ducret: Le sens de la marche
From the word go, guitarist Marc Ducret's Le sens de la marche enters another world, an unsettled one full of surprise and anguish--one for which there can be no preparation. Vaguely reminiscent of Frank Zappa, King Crimson and Tim Berne, it's a musical hubbub of organized chaos--systematic in theory but brutal and brilliant in practice.
The references, however, are many and various. Ducret's jungle is wild and urbane; on “Tapage," the distant echoes of Duke Ellington's jungle can be heard, ...
read moreMarc Ducret: Le Sens De La Marche
Marc Ducret is usually experienced either as a highly noticeable sideman or, if he's leading his own band, a dangerously pointed guitar brandisher. Mostly, he's known for working with Tim Berne, as part of Bloodcount and Big Satan. This solo album reveals one of Ducret's other aspects: composer and bandleader on a particularly ambitious scale. His 10-piece ensemble sounds even bigger than that, benefiting from strategic electrification and amplification. The material was recorded in Ducret's French homeland, ...
read moreMarc Ducret Trio: Heart-Stopping Music in Helsinki
The Marc Ducret Trio Rythmihäiri Club Helsinki, Finland November 31, 2007
Lost in translation is not an applicable excuse when listening to free-form instrumental jazz. It is to be expected. Sitting through 25 minutes of the intense experimental music the Marc Ducret Trio offers up during a single selection, inevitably the listener is sometimes in limbo -- wherever such respite might be!
Playing to a packed bar at Helsinki's Rythmihäiri (Cardiac Dysfunction) Club, ...
read moreMarc Ducret: Qui Parle?
Now in his late forties, guitarist Marc Ducret has built a career out of taking the essence of various traditions and turning them on their side. With Qui Parle? Ducret has fashioned perhaps his most ambitious and audacious effort to date, a seventy-five minute suite that is bold and almost entirely indefinable in terms of how it references any known style. This is a daring release that creates its own vernacular.
Ranging from chamber-like passages to punk-informed rock themes to ...
read moreMarc Ducret: Qui Parle?
While he's turned in some brilliant interim work , it's been four years since Marc Ducret's last solo project. Now 46, Ducret worked more than two years on Qui parle? (which translates to “Who's speaking?"), wherein his conceptual thrust begins to overtake his colossal aptitude as a pure player. With the members of his working trio plus ten other musicians, three actors and a singer, Ducret has created a collage involving sound and studio as much as pen and paper. ...
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