Alessandro Bosetti, Michel Doneda, Bhob Rainey - Placés Dans L'air
(Potlatch)
Though definitely not a musical movement that had its beginnings recently, the less-is-more school of improvisation is growing as never before in recent years. Whether a counter to the noisy clamor favored by some of the more established figures in improvised music from the late 1960's on, or an extension of minimalism, quiet, miniscule sounds have softly, to quote the cliché, made quiet the new loud.
Alessandro Bosetti, Michel Doneda, and Bhob Rainey, and international trio of soprano saxophonists, are each, in their own way, students of the aforementioned school of tiny sounds. Placés Dans L'air finds the three exploring the open air discreetly, with soft breaths and sustained notes. At an expectedly low volume, Bosetti, Doneda, and Rainey weave silky threads of unkeyed exhalations and minor sound expulsions, so when high-pitched whines and flutters begin to pepper the musical canvas, they can seem deafening and alien. Pierre-Olivier Boulant's "subjective" recording process is no doubt partially responsible for the phenomenon, but a main area of exploration among the three musicians appears to be this introduction of a quiet sound into an even quieter setting, and the resulting illusion of high volume that can result. When multiple drones rise into the air together, the sound is surprisingly jarring, and a new level of aural intensity is drawn out, though it's carefully still at a volume which would never be mistaken for anything classifiable as loud. Even at their most boisterous, Bosetti, Doneda, and Rainey sound almost as if their instruments are still finding their sea legs, like baby birds learning to fly, but the results are far from unsuccessful or displeasing.
There's not voluminous evidence of the wide-ranging techniques of the three musicians on this disc, though their fairly single-minded improvisational vision contains a certain purity. It seems as though there may exist a bigger array of improvisational possibilities within the limits that seem to have been set during this session, but Placés Dans L'air comes off as somewhat one-dimensional and dry. This isn't to say that the album is a complete bust, but it may be a sign that complete devotion to quiet may be vulnerable to the same pitfalls that can befall a similar allegiance to skull-splitting volume.
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