Radioastronomie Basses Fréquences

Melvins - Basses Loaded (2016) {Ipecac IPC178}
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© 2016 Ipecac Recordings / [PIAS] | IPC178
Rock / Doom Metal / Stoner Rock / Jazz Fusion / Experimental Rock / Country Rock

Like the great American filmmaker William Castle, the Melvins have learned that a gimmick is a big help in getting folks to pay attention to what you're doing. The grunge pioneers have a long, rich tradition of creatively rearranging their membership, and for a band obsessed with a thick and heavy low end, they've taken the logical step and made an album with a rotating lineup of bass players. Basses Loaded feature six different bassists scattered among its 12 tracks, including Steven McDonald (of Redd Kross and OFF!), Jeff Pinkus (from the Butthole Surfers and Honky), Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle and Fantômas), Jared Warren (from Big Business), and Krist Novoselic (formerly of Sweet 75, Eyes Adrift, and some band from Aberdeen).

Ensembles specializing in the French Baroque have been busy resurrecting music that's both of interest to specialists and a lot of fun for anybody discovering that much of this repertory makes good party music – just as it did when it was composed. Boismortier was a composer from Lorraine who went to Paris and made good by pleasing well-situated patrons with attractive, somewhat kaleidoscopic music that was well suited to the needs of the instrumentalists they employed. Included on the rather confusingly titled Boismortier: Sonates pour basses are pieces for low-register instruments – viola da gamba, cello, and bassoon, as well as several pieces of perhaps didactic nature, with unspecified and thus adaptable instrumentation.

Véronique Gens's intense soprano shines in this program of tragic cantatas about a trio of fatally wronged Roman heroines written by the twentysomething Handel during his triumphant Italian sojourn. Here, luckless Lucrezia and abandoned Armida vacillate between love and hate for the men who wronged them and agitated Agrippina rages against the son who condemned her to death, the Emperor Nero. Gens is with these wracked souls all the way, bending her lovely voice to capture the verbal nuances of the texts; listen, for example, how she deadens her tone for Agrippina's "A me sol giunga la morte." Throughout, she stays within the stylistic frame of historically informed performance practices, as do her excellent accompanists.

Born in Toledo, Diego Ortiz published the Trattado de Glosas in Rome in 1553. At that time he was living in Naples in the service of Ferdinand Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba and Viceroy of Naples. This region was deeply influenced by Spain. His treatise, published simultaneously in Spanish and Italian, is first and foremost a precious source for the art of Spanish instrumental performance. The second book of the Trattado de Glosas is performed here in its entirety, with Bruno Cocset and Guido Balestracci alternating in the Recercadas. As a counterpoint to this corpus mingling inventiveness and virtuosity, the programme includes short pieces by composers emblematic of the Golden Century of Spain, contemporaries of Ortiz: Antonio de Cabezón, Luis de Milán and Tomás Luis de Victoria.

The cello came to prominence in the eighteenth century by supplanting the viol as both a solo instrument and a favored choice for continuo support. The cello's impressive range and wide variety of tonal colors has inspired composers ever since. Bruno Cocset leads the ensemble Les Basses Re?unies in a recording that takes us back to the origins of the cello and to the instrument's early repertoire.

After the success of 'The Nascita del Bologna & Violoncello', Bruno Cocset and Les Basses Réunies give us a new version of Purcell s 'Fantazias' [British Library manuscript], with violin consort and a harpsichord consort. All the instruments played on this recording borrow from both families, the viols and the violins, taking the best from each: richness of timbre and development of the harmonics, so that each voice plays an equal part in the narrative while retaining its own identity. Henry Purcell s fifteen Fantazias for the viols, which exist in an autograph manuscript source in the British Library, were not published until 1927.

It may be a little surprising, or disconcerting, but it is not the demonstrative, furioso Vivaldi, the Vivaldi full of striking contrasts, that you will find here. The ardour, the spirit, of his music is there of course, but our aim is rather to bring out the more intimate, more complex side of his work, its many timbres, colours, textures and emotions all the variety that is to be found in the music of this extraordinary composer, loved by some exponents of early music and shunned by others. Les Basses Runies have chosen to use many different instruments and timbres for these pieces, and to transcribe and transpose some of them, the aims being to present little-known works, show well-known ones in a new light, and to highlight the rich palette of sound and the many possible timbral combinations afforded by the instruments of Les Basses Runies, thus expressively and movingly revealing the composer s very soul.